Yesterday in Denmark the launch of the first installation in the world to eliminate carbon dioxide from the fumes escaping from a coal-fired power station was launched. Perhaps a significant advance in the fight against greenhouse gases.
It happened on March 15, in Denmark, precisely at the site of the Esbjerg power plant. The event is important because it suggests a solution to help significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. Inaugurated yesterday, Castor, an industrial pilot known as “CO2 capture”, carried out under the aegis of the IFP (French Petroleum Institute) and the European Commission, is quite simply the first installation to capture carbon dioxide at even the fumes from a thermal power plant to store it in the basement.
Objective: to bury 10% of CO2 produced in Europe
How to limit the volume of CO2 generated by industrial installations, such as cement plants, power plants or refineries? These would be responsible for more than 60% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The idea, for a long time on the bench, is to recover the gas where it is produced, that is to say directly in the offending factories, and reinject it into the basement before it is diffused into the atmosphere. This is the so-called "geological capture and storage" route: "the most promising" according to IFP.
But if on paper it is simple, in reality one runs in particular with problems of costs, which Castor seems to solve. This program, launched in 2004, brings together thirty partners coordinated by IFP to design by 2008 technologies to capture and store no less than 10% of CO2 emitted in Europe, 30% of emissions from large installations industrial.