It has been announced by Membrane Technology and Research (MTR) Carbon Capture that the mechanical stage of the creation process of a carbon capture plant at the Wyoming Integrated Test Centre (ITC) is complete. This carbon capture plant is based in Wyoming, specifically Gillette.

It has been established that this plant will have the ability to capture a maximum of 1250 tonnes of carbon dioxide on a daily basis and it will focus on capturing CO2 from Basin Electric’s dry Fork Station (DFS). This is a coal fired power plant and at the moment it produces 99.9% pure liquid CO2 and it has an excellent capture rate of 90%. It is clear that this system will be the first commercial scale membrane capture plant to be placed into operation and this plant is due to begin operations later in 2024.

The headquarters of MTR Carbon Capture are based in Newark, California and it is this facility which develops, engineers and finally, manufactures membrane technologies for point source carbon capture. MTR’s Polaris™ polymeric membrane is highly modular, scalable and is also cost effective. So far it holds a proven fifteen years with extensive field testing in conjunction with the U.S DOE. Furthermore, MTR Carbon Capture is a division of Membrane Technology and Research Inc., which is well-known as a global leader within the development and commercial supply of membrane-based separation systems. The company has held this position for more than forty years and they have successfully deployed over 450 membrane gas separation systems throughout the world.

The new development, the MTR Carbon Capture Polaris™ membrane process, functions without the need for chemicals and also requires only a small amount of water, this results in the process being a cleaner and more environmentally friendly carbon capture method, especially when it is compared to alternative capture systems that function with solvents. On top of this, Polaris™ does not need heat or steam input to operate and this is a huge benefit as using these means that more CO2 emissions would be generated and other disadvantages such as low operating costs would occur. It is clear that capture systems that use MTR’s membrane technology are very modular and compact, plus they provide flexibility for limited space applications, whilst simultaneously reducing capital costs.

Furthermore, the MTR Carbon Capture system which is located at the Wyoming ITC is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s large scale pilot carbon capture program and this means that it receives funding through grant DE-FE0031587. A huge benefit of this program, is that it provides support to the development of key technologies which will have the effect of significantly improving the economics, as well as environmental performance of point source carbon capture.

So far, MTR’s success has been made clear, due to the multiple awards the company has received from the DOE. All of these awards have been presented to the company in support of the development and scale up of the Polaris™ membrane capture technology.

President of MTR Carbon Capture, Brett Andrews, commented, “This is a very exciting milestone for MTR and an important step in scaling affordable, clean technology for point source carbon capture. MTR’s Polaris™ membranes have been proven, with over 15 years of development and a series of pilot and demonstration carbon capture plants of increasing scale, culminating in the largest membrane capture plant ever built.”