World's Richest Person Elon Musk Is Offering $100M Prize for Best Carbon Capture Technology

On Thursday, January 21, Elon Musk announced that he would donate $100 million as a prize for the best carbon capture technology that will reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Elon Musk, who has recently been announced as the world's richest man after surpassing Amazon's Jeff Bezos, did not add further details on his post but assured him that he would announce the details next week. According to TechCrunch, this program is connected to the non-profit organization Xprize Foundation, which hosts competitions that encourage technological innovation.

Carbon capture and storage schemes have been criticized by green groups because it is costly and does not reduce fossil fuel emissions, Science Times reported.

The Carbon Capture and Storage Technology' (CCS)

Carbon dioxide is one of the main greenhouse gases that cause global warming and climate change that affects life on Earth. With carbon capture and storage technology (CCS), scientists hope to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

A study published in Science Direct focused on the two main aspects of carbon capture technology. That is, the technology itself and carbon capture for industrial utilization. Carbon capture includes three methods, which are the post-combustion, oxy-combustion, and precombustion.

Post-combustion is the separation of carbon dioxide from the waste gasses using conventional acid gas separation methods. On the other hand, oxy-combustion has been a study of many scientists in the past as an option for future power generation. While precombustion separates carbon dioxide from fossil fuels before the combustion is completed.

Carbon capture technology benefits several industries, such as cement and clinker production, oil refinery, gas-to-liquid process, iron and steel industry, and water desalination.

ALSO READ: Carbon Capture: A Potential Weapon to Combat Climate Change

Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU)

Innovators have developed a new technology that aims to capture waste carbon dioxide emitted by refineries and factories to reduce carbon dioxide that harms the planet. Although it is a not-so-new technology as several companies have already popped up in the last two decades.

However, carbon capture and storage (CCS) is costly. Some companies found an alternative, the carbon capture, and utilization, a cousin to CCS that captures and converts carbon emission into something useful.

CCU encourages creating an ecosystem that recycles carbon dioxide and converts it into value-added products, like cement, methanol, and urea. It also can be used in enhanced oil recovery (EOR).

LanzaTech, for example, has developed a technology that captures waste gas and transforms it into usable ethanol fuel using bacteria. According to the report of Yahoo!, the bacteria is LanzaTech's core technology that eats the dirty gas steams that eventually ferments them and emit ethanol.

Ethanol is used in various products in which LanzaTech is taking advantage by creating the spin-off called LanzaJet and working on other possible products, like converting ethanol to ethylene used in making polyethylene for bottles and PEP that is used for making clothes.