Carbon capture technologies have been used in industrial processes since the 1930s

The early history of carbon capture begins with the flue gas sulfur dioxide (SO₂) capture technologies known as desulfurization that were developed in the 1930s. These technologies were used to capture SO₂ from the exhaust gases of combustion and industrial processes. These machines, known as scrubbers, were used to remove SO₂ by passing the gas through multiple stages of lime or limestone slurry where the SO₂ would chemically bond to form gypsum. Desulfurization units were installed in two British coal-fired plants in 1936, but due to their high capital cost and poor reliability, the technology was not further developed until the 1970s when it started to gain attention as an effective tool for reducing SO₂ emissions ¹.

Amine scrubbing, which is the main form of carbon dioxide (CO₂) flue gas capture technology, relies on the same premise as desulfurization but instead of a limestone slurry, an amine solution is used to absorb the CO₂. Amines are a class of organic compounds derived from ammonia (NH₃) that are typically used in the form of a solution and are capable of selectively absorbing CO₂ from a gas mixture. The first patents for the basic process of amine scrubbing were filed in 1930, and they were installed on a small scale in some gas and coal-fired power plants in the 1980s ¹. Today, amine scrubbers are the most common form of carbon capture technology used in coal and gas-fired power plants.

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Footnotes

1. Rochelle, G. T. (2009). Amine scrubbing for CO2 capture. Science, 325(5948), 1652-1654. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1176731 ↩ ↩²