To Test Carbon-Capture Tech, Firms Visit this Wyoming Facility (1)

摘要

The prototype for a filter that can pull planet-warming carbon dioxide from industrial smokestacks appeared promising enough to win a $51.7 million grant from the U.S. Department ofEnergy. After a decade of development, Membrane Technology and Research Inc., the California company behind the new carbon-capture technology, finally had the funding to run largetests.And that meant a trip to Gillette, Wyoming, a town of about 32,000 people that remains the only location in the U.S. capable of running trials on carbon-capture devices at close to realworldscale. The only alternative to the Wyoming Integrated Test Center, as the facility is known, would have been for the company to build its own demonstration site, at great cost.“You can’t move to the final commercial stage without such a test,” said Brice Freeman, a product manager at Membrane Technology. “If not for this site, we would have had to turn to theprivate sector. So this really improves the commercialization and de-risking of the technology.”