“It’s about opening people’s minds and really demonstrating what is possible,” Extavour said.
Five of the finalists will compete to make use of actual flue gases from a Wyoming coal-fired power plant. The other five will compete at a gas-fired power plant in Alberta, Canada.
Starting this summer, they will have a year to practice at the plants before data collection for competition begins. The two winners, one at each site, will each collect a $7.5 million grand prize.
Chemistry is why the competition has two tracks. Carbon dioxide concentrations at the Wyoming Integrated Test Center, a new research facility at the Dry Fork Station coal-fired power plant near Gillette, are about double those at the Alberta Carbon Conversion Technology Centre, a new research facility at the Shepard Energy Centre gas-fired power plant in Calgary, Alberta.
The 10 finalists scored highest among 20 semifinalists on how much CO2 they could put to use, as well as the value of their products. Making concrete, for example, scores high on volume but not product value, while making relatively small amounts of pricey carbon fiber scores low on volume but high on value.
The finalists include C2CNT, a team from Ashburn, Virginia, making carbon nanotubes, and CarbonCure, of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, which already has been using carbon dioxide on a commercial scale to chemically create limestone in concrete.
CarbonCure works with almost 100 concrete plants in the U.S. and Canada but gets its CO2 from a variety of sources, said Jennifer Wagner, CarbonCure’s XPRIZE team leader.
“We know the technology works. We know there is an environmental benefit and an economic benefit to the concrete producers,” Wagner said. “What we need to show for the purposes of the XPRIZE is that technology can score the highest.”
Besides saving concrete producers money, the process can potentially reduce demand for cement from plants that are responsible for up to 5 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions, she said.
The competition is sponsored by NRG Energy and Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance. XPRIZE is an organizer of technological innovation contests including one that awarded $10 million for the first private organization to launch a manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks.