Tuticorin-based plant is locking up 60,000 tonnes of CO2, converting it to baking soda

Alkali Chemicals has installed a CO2 stripping chemical that will lock up to 60,000 tonnes of CO2 a year (Image for representation)

An Indian company has taken lead in the race to capture carbon dioxide emitted from coal-powered boilers and use it to make baking powder (soda-ash), in the process, also saving the environment from global warming. According to The Guardian, a Tuticorin-based industrial plant has been testing this technology without subsidy, a feat that has not been achieved without high costs. Alkali Chemicals, which has installed a CO2 stripping chemical that will lock up to 60,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, is now attracting global interest. The Tuticorin plant stands as the first industrial scale example of successful carbon capture and utilisation (CCU), while projects around the world have concentrated on carbon capture and storage (CCS) at high economic cost with no benefits.

“I am a businessman. I never thought about saving the planet. I needed a reliable stream of CO2, and this was the best way of getting it,” said Managing Director of the firm, Ramachandran Gopalan in an interview to BBC Radio 4. According to him the plant now has ‘virtually zero emissions’ of CO2 in the air or water.

The method has been invented by a company called Carbonclean, which claims that their process is slightly more efficient than present CCS chemical amine, and also requires smaller equipment. This translates into significantly low build cost. The resulting outcome of the conversion is soda ash, a base chemical that finds its use in manufacture of glass, detergents, paper products, etc.

“Climate change is going to impact the poorest two billion people on our planet. Carbon capture offers a solutions to this problem. The flue gas discharged from the chimney is extracted from the existing stack and fed to the CCS unit through a flue gas duct. After cleaning the gas, it is passed through an absorber for capturing CO2. The CO2 thus recovered can be used as a raw material for downstream industries,” Carbonclean Solutions website reads.

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Carbonclean believes that capturing usable CO2 can help deal with 5-10 per cent of the world’s emissions from coal.