On
the banks of the Coosa River in rural
Alabama sits a power plant with three
towering stacks spouting torrents of
steam. Visited regularly by mile-long
trains that unload coal onto an enormous black mountain,
the plant looks like many other electric generating stations — the sort that spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and help accelerate global warming.
But this is the National Energy Technology Laboratory,
an experimental plant where the U.S. Department of Energy
(DOE) tests some of the most promising new ideas for producing cleaner power — including an inorganic membrane that
is the product of more than a decade of groundbreaking
research by chemical engineers at WPI.
18 > wpi.edu/+research
"With global climate change being a potential issue,
technology that promotes the efficient capture of CO2 from
power generation applications is critical," says Bryan Morreale, the National Energy Technology Laboratory's focus
area lead for materials science and engineering. He calls
WPI's membrane "a revolutionary approach."
The Alabama facility is home to the National Carbon
Capture Center, or NCCC, whose mission is to fi nd ways
to derive energy from coal without letting greenhouse
gases — primarily carbon dioxide, or CO2 — enter the atmosphere. It's an exciting proposition, but it's also fraught with
challenges, not the least of which is how to capture carbon.
One approach is coal gasification. Rather than simply
being burned, as happens in most coal-fi red plants in the