Carbon Sequestration Makes for Clean Energy, Future Revenue

by Russell Boniface
Associate Editor

How do you . . . reclaim carbon to create energy-efficient applications while also generating a revenue stream?

Summary: Tim Newberry, AIA, sole proprietor of Honolulu-based TN DESIGN Assoc. AIA, Inc., is working with Oahu, Hawaii-based Carbon Diversion, Inc. (CDI) to facilitate the development of carbon reactor plants for carbon sequestration, a process of capturing carbon from waste products to create new, sustainable products.

TN DESIGN has been retained by CDI to do all facilities planning and marketing for CDI plants. Newberry says his firm does the fact finding for the CDI plants, as if for an architectural project. The plant reactors serve small and rural communities and are designed to be easily transported. CDI’s main operation site is in Kapolei, Oahu, Hawaii, with plants in Tennessee and New Mexico.

“We find out the the requirements in a municipality and we help facilitate that,” says Newberry. “We do the plans, hire local architects and engineers to assist us with information on the local codes, and pull it together as if it were just a regular architectural project. For example, we will deal with tying green energy into the transmission lines of the local utility so we can provide green power.”

Carbon diversion is a trash-to-energy process. Newberry explains: “What CDI does is use a process to reduce trash into clean, green energy. This includes all kinds of gases, such as liquid propane. They sequester carbon out of those feedstocks.”

The process utilizes carbonization reactors that are 10 feet tall and three feet in daimeter. Cannisters are loaded with feedstock and the cannister is put into the reactor, which generates its own heat. At the end of the process the cannisters are removed and placed in water to cool. Eight cannisters are burned in an eight hour shift, and the end product is carbon. No emissions are released.

CDI was formed in 2004 to commercialize its patented carbonization technology, originally developed with the University of Hawaii Energy lab. CDI processes waste, or feedstock, that otherwise would be landfill-bound into carbon chars using a gastrification process. Gastrification is a method for extracting energy from many different types of materials. The feedstock that goes into the gastrification process can include municipal solid waste, rubber tires, sewage sludge, agricultural waste, biomedical materials, and even macadamia shells. The resulting carbon chars are eventually turned into sustainable bioproducts, labeled bicarbon, biofuel, and bioenergy. These carbon-based products are used in industry for agriculture, metallurgy, water, gas and air filtration, and renewable energy such as wind and solar power and electricity.

“We can make many projects carbon neutral or negative,” says Newberry. “The process is carbon negative. In regards to LEED™, there are many LEED credits we can get from doing this process in the environmental section.”

Newberry says that reclaiming feedstock from carbon is profitable but the idea will take time in coming. “I just went to a solid waste management meeting in upstate New York and it is interesting to discover the talk of the gastrifcaton process. Many are saying they are still three to four years away from using the application. But right now we can sequestor carbon for carbon credits, and that creates an income stream. We have many contracts for all the carbon we produce that go into the steel industry, pharmacueticals, agriculture, and water filtration. That is the profitable end of the spectrum, and there are no emissions, since we don’t pollute the atmosphere in the process.”