ESG Clean Energy Achieves 100% CO2 Capture from Combustion Exhaust Stream

ESG Clean Energy’s two-step carbon-capture system successfully removed 100% of CO₂ emissions produced from an internal combustion engine’s exhaust stream at its grid-connected 4.4 MW gas-driven power generation plant in Holyoke, MA. The technology first removes water from the exhaust and then captures CO₂—drying the exhaust significantly increases CO₂-adsorbent capacity. This process allows a 100% capture rate while reducing the footprint and cost of the system.

“This is a huge milestone for our development team and one we have been anticipating for some time,” said Nick Scuderi, President of ESG Clean Energy. “It’s great to see the proof and the data that shows we are able to capture 100% of the CO₂ from an internal combustion engine.”

The water removal and carbon-capture technologies are designed for large and small systems and can be retrofitted onto operating power plants; also, it’s compatible with mobile applications. ESG’s water removal system contains a ceramic membrane integrated within a mechanical cooling system. Its carbon-capture system uses low-cost, non-toxic, and easily managed solid adsorbers for versatility and energy efficiency.

ESG Clean Energy will deploy its system across all planned facilities and license the technology to a Camber Energy subsidiary for Canada and specified locations in the United States.

In February 2024, ESG Clean Energy published test results for its patented water removal system—it exceeded a water removal rate of over 90%. This level of efficiency in removing water from power generation systems enables a low-cost, energy-efficient way of capturing carbon. The testing took place at ESG’s Holyoke plant.

Spencer Schecht, the Senior Business Development Lead at the Global CCS Institute, was a guest on the TurboTime podcast. He discussed how carbon-capture-and-storage (CCS) facilities are at an all-time high and dove into some of the challenges and hurdles it’s facing.

Schecht, who also authored our May/June cover story, said that CCS has ramped up to an all-time high—a 102% increase in scheduled deployments since 2022—due to supportive and enabling policy, as CCS is becoming a more prominent feature of public policy.

“At a high level, we need CCS and CO₂ removal to meet our climate targets to achieve climate neutrality,” Schecht said. “So, while we require an all-of-the-above portfolio of climate technologies and solutions, it is the versatility of CCS—the fact that it enables both emissions mitigation and removal—that makes it such a unique and important resource in our climate toolkit. For example, CCS can be applied across emissions-intensive industries, including hard-to-abate sectors such as steel, cement, chemical production, and power production, to achieve decarbonization that is not otherwise technically nor economically possible. This enables the reduction of low-carbon hydrogen, and it can also be retrofitted on fossil-fuel power plants or incorporated in the design of new power plants providing baseload low-carbon dispatchable electricity. And when combined with bioenergy or direct air capture, with permanent geologic storage, CCS is an enabler of delivering negative emissions, and we need negative emissions to scale massively in the years ahead. This lays out a very clear picture that CCS and CO₂ removal must scale up to gigatons, which is billions of tons per year, to achieve our climate targets.”