Performance Verification of Carbon Utilization Technologies in the Nrg Cosia Carbon Xprize, Transforming CO2 into Valuable Products

The $20 million NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE is a global competition to develop breakthrough technologies that will convert COâ‚‚ emissions from power plants and industrial facilities into valuable products like building materials, alternative fuels and other items that we use every day. Under contract to XPRIZE and following ISO compliant protocol, Southern Research provides independent/unbiased field performance evaluations of the technologies/teams that have entered the competition.

The NRG-Cosia Carbon XPRIZE competition consists of 3 rounds with down-select of the most promising technologies after each round. The competition is structured as a two-track prize, with one track focused on testing technologies at a coal power plant, and the other focused on testing technologies at a natural gas power plant. 47 teams submitted proposals to XPRIZE and entered Round 1 of the competition. From these entries, 27 were down-selected for Round 2 by an independent panel of experts that was appointed by XPRIZE. In Round 2, Southern conducted independent performance verification of the technologies at laboratory scale. Results of these assessments were used by the judging panel to further down select the field to 10 finalists for long term pilot scale demonstration – 5 at a coal fired power plant (the Wyoming Integrated Test Center) and 5 at a gas generating facility (the Alberta Carbon Conversion Technology Centre).

Southern’s activities supporting the competition finals will include:

• On site verification activities during process commissioning and startup of each system,
• On-site short term operational verification,
• Off-site long term performance validation,
• Final assessments of all data and comparison to XPRIZE Round 3 requirements,
• Review of submitted final data and reports from each team, and
• Generation of final Verification Reports.

The final verification reports for each team will be used by XPRIZE and the judging panel to complete the competition.