The center, located in the City of Energy (Ciuden) at El Bierzo (León), takes off with the goal of studying viable solutions for reducing the emission of greenhouse gases at thermal power stations.
The Spanish plant is pioneering on an international level because it allows doing research with all types of carbon, and incorporates two different oxy-combustion technologies: pulverized carbon (PC) and circulating fluidized bed (CFB), the latter being the only one of its kind in the world.

For these reasons, this is one of the leading CO2 capture research centers in the world, and will serve as a laboratory on a real scale to do research into solutions against emissions in the future.

The main process of CO2 capture at the facility is based on the combustion of carbon using oxygen mixed with recirculating gases as the oxidizing agent, instead of air. In this manner it’s possible to directly obtain a concentrated current of CO2 in the exhaust gases, and avoid the separation of nitrogen introduced with the air in conventional combustion.

The Center for the Development of CO2 Capture Technologies will not be fully operative for several months, when it can thereafter begin to test these techniques for CO2 capture. However, Spain expects that this center could be one of the best technological options for contributing to the stabilization of the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

El Mundo