Western Michigan University has gotten a funding boost with a grant of more than $2 million from the U.S. Department of Energy. The grant is earmarked for research on carbon capture and storage technology, or C-CS, as part of the Clean MI project.
The initiative brings together WMU students and faculty with other institutions to develop ideas for capturing CO2 emissions and safely storing them underground.
Mert Atilhan, an engineering professor at the university, says while keeping the study small-scale, there are two paths for CO2.
“You can just try to convert it to something else, which is pretty useful fuels,” Atilhan said. “Number two, you could just stabilize it, make sure it’s not going to go back to the atmosphere and stay safe somewhere where we are going to store it.”
The DOE has also chosen four Carbon Capture Large-Scale Pilot Projects located in power plants and industrial facilities in Kentucky, Mississippi, Texas, and Wyoming. They’ll focus on point-source carbon capture, utilization and storage.
The projects all align with the Biden administration’s target of a “net-zero economy” by 2050.
