The NET Power team in Texas is currently building a power plant which will use a type of carbon dioxide instead of steam for turning turbines in order to generate electricity.
This will mark the power plant as the first one in the world for trying to make use of the new technology and might be able to direct a great evolution towards green energy production.
As reported in the journal Science, for generating electricity in greater quantities, massive turbines have to be powered by steam formed by boiling water. Although inefficient, the method is considered to be the universal standard.
However, this process might change by these power plants that will replace steam with carbon dioxide which has been heated and pressurized to make a supercritical state that contains the density of a liquid but yet expands to full up a space like a gas. Due to gas being dense, CO2 use can increase efficiency by using much smaller turbines.
Futurism informs, inside the plant, natural gas is burned in an environment of pure oxygen for preventing the release of pure CO2; which means that the plant will be totally emission free.
Levi Irwin and Yann Le Moullec associated with SETA informed that making such a turbine is no child’s play, hence the reason it has not been tried before though being promising. Apart from requiring great energy while pressurizing carbon dioxide, temperature and pressure have to be controlled accordingly too or else the gas can cause problems by condensing into droplets. In addition to that, a turbine is also needed to be modified to work with the supercritical gas.
The power plant is supposed to start by the year’s end, but is still a test site. However, the company aims to build a massive power plant which will be possible to power 200,000 homes. The company also believes that they can generate electricity at a cost almost equal to natural gas plant, reports Tech Xplore.