On the Radar…

ION Engineering, LLC and the University of Colorado (CU) have finalized an exclusive license for a technology to capture CO2 from emissions at natural gas wells and coal-fired power plants. Based in Boulder, ION had previously optioned the rights to the invention in December 2008 and received a $100K proof of concept investment from the CU Technology Transfer Office and the CU-Boulder Energy Initiative. The licensed technology, developed in the CU-Boulder Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering, uses ionic liquid solutions as the solvent, instead of water, to enable more efficient capture of carbon and other contaminants. ION has demonstrated the feasibility of its strategy in the laboratory and is currently working on optimizing the solvents for specific gas composition and scale up.