We have had a very successful season with our outdoor contactor prototype. After our installation and start-up procedures in August, we were able to accumulate well over 500 hours of air ingestion as we progressed through packing conditioning and CO2 absorption stages. In October, we were able to run un-interrupted CO2 absorption – with our regeneration system maintaining equilibrium liquid conditions – for several days at a time. We have much more long-duration testing scheduled for next summer, but we all feel like we’ve gained a great deal of practical experience already. We’ve operated our contactor through hot summer weather, dusty fall days, and even sub-freezing nights – and thus far, our performance data is very encouraging. We have exciting results on several of the key aspects that we designed this prototype to test:
We are now taking our prototype off-line for the winter; we have a lot of analysis and refinement to implement from this summer’s efforts, and we have our many other projects to advance over the coming months. Next spring we will begin further operation of our prototype, and we are even hoping to test the completely new, low-energy regeneration system that we have been working on! -GH.