Inventys Thermal Technologies has announced that former US Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu has joined its board of directors.
The Vancouver, Canada-based firm is in the process of commercialising an innovative technology for carbon capture and storage (CCS) that significantly less costly than other CCS technologies.
Inventys’ technology is based on a ceramic material on a drum that rotates inside smokestacks to capture carbon dioxide from flue gas streams. Dr. Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, told the New York Times that alternative CCS technologies based on amine adsorption were too expensive.
Inventys has tested its technology on a rig in Vancouver running on natural gas and says that it was able to capture carbon for about $15/ton – a quarter of the cost of an amine system. It says that the capital efficiency of the process will make enhanced oil recovery and carbon sequestration economically viable.
According to Inventys, its technology is scalable and can be readily integrated into new and existing combustion and chemical processes.
