Caterpillar – the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and industrial equipment, acquired CarbonPoint Solutions – the US-based carbon capture company. According to the Vice President of the Oil & Gas and Marine Division of Caterpillar – Rod Shurman, the acquisition aims to facilitate the company’s efforts to reach its climate change goals by reducing carbon emissions.
“Combining CarbonPoint Solutions’ patented technology with Caterpillar Oil & Gas solutions enables us to further reduce greenhouse gas emission while helping our customers meet their climate-related objectives,” he said.
As said by Paul Dunn, President of CarbonPoint Solutions, the deal will accelerate the rapid deployment of the carbon capture techniques for Caterpillar engines. CarbonPoint Solutions’ carbon capture technology – the Semi-Closed Cycle will work for Caterpillar engines and Solar gas turbines.
CarbonPoint Solutions Technology
The company’s patented Semi-Closed Cycle (SCC) and CO2-TSA processes are built to enable concentration and capture of CO2 at the distributed power system scale across a broad range of reciprocating engines and gas turbines.
So far the carbon capture in engine exhaust has been difficult because of the low concentration of CO2 compared to other sources. The Semi-Closed Cycle system concentrates the exhaust CO2 and thus enables economically viable carbon capture for distributed power. Apart from SCC, CarbonPoint Solutions also offers carbon capture solutions that are fully integrated or standalone based on advanced molecular sieve technology.
The aim of the company is to provide affordable carbon capture solutions to the energy industry, as well as utilization and storage.
The acquisition of CarbonPoint Solutions by Caterpillar is a signal large manufacturing companies are showing ambitions of reducing carbon emissions and looking into carbon capture as a potentially viable solution. So far the technology has been receiving a lot of attention from hard-to-decarbonize industries as it could capture CO2 right from the point of source and allows companies to keep their current business models and operations.
