Innovator Energy’s patented technology, CO₂ Evolution®, is a fundamentally novel approach for capturing CO₂. CO₂ Evolution® captures more than 90% of CO₂ from power plant flue gas at $5-8 per metric ton (OPEX), allowing power plants to profitably separate and sell CO₂ without government subsidies, carbon taxes or credits. CO₂ Evolution® is the first and only CO₂ capture technology powered by abundant low temperature condenser water, enabling the technology to have no parasitic load to a power plant. The technology comprises only low-cost reagents. Installing CO₂ Evolution® unit does not modify a power plant’s steam cycle.
Three years ago, Ethan Novek developed the concept of decoupling thermal energy input from CO₂ desorption as a means of reducing the temperature requirement (and parasitic load) of CO₂ capture. He devised a method of achieving this by using a thermally reversible reagent to strip CO₂ and then recovering the reagent using low temperature heat. The first versions of the technology involved using volatile, water soluble organic solvents, recoverable using distillation and published in the American Chemical Society peer-reviewed journal, Environmental Science & Technology Letters (ES&T Letters, 2016 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.estlett.6b00253).
Innovator Energy has developed and demonstrated significant improvements to the technology. Major improvements from version 1.0 (version in ES&T paper) to version 8.0 (current version of the technology) include: