CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) – Cooking oil and graphene, a recently discovered substance stronger than steel, might seem to have little in common, but some theorize both could be made from carbon dioxide emitted by coal- and gas-fired power plants.
Teams from Canada, China, Finland, India, Scotland, Switzerland and the U.S. have submitted 47 proposals for the first round of a $20 million contest to put power-plant emissions to profitable use, NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE officials announced Wednesday.
“Overall, we’ve got some people trying some classic approaches, some classic chemistry, and they’re trying to do it in a new way, or a more efficient way. And then we have some people taking some unorthodox approaches and they’re trying to do something brand new,” said Marcius Extavour, director of technical operations for the contest.
NRG is a major U.S. energy company based in Houston, Texas. COSIA stands for the Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, a group of companies developing the Canadian oil sands.
The first round of competition will be a technical and business viability review on paper. Up to 30 teams will advance to the second round, which will involve using simulated flue gas in a lab.