Skyonic dedicates its carbon-capture plant

SAN ANTONIO — Austin-based Skyonic Corp. on Tuesday dedicated its first-of-a-kind factory in San Antonio, one that captures carbon dioxide emissions from a cement plant for conversion to byproducts that can be sold profitably to other industries.

The $125 million Capitol SkyMine plant employs 44 workers, and indirectly will support about 200 more in logistics and other services. But the factory’s environmental benefits took top billing at the dedication ceremony attended by about 300 people at the Northeast Side site at 11551 Nacogdoches Road.

Capitol SkyMine, which took about a year to build, will capture 15 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions, or 75,000 tons per year, from Zachry Corp.’s adjacent Capitol Aggregates cement plant that will be transformed into baking soda, bleach and hydrochloric acid.

The cement plant emits carbon dioxide from burning coal in the cement-making process.

Skyonic, founded in 2005, has lined up industrial customers for the byproducts in long-term contracts and expects to clear $48 million in annual revenues and profits of $28 million.

“I’m living proof it sometimes takes 10 years to achieve overnight success,” said Skyonic CEO, President and founder Joe Jones. He said it was difficult to convince others that such an operation could be profitable and did not involve pumping carbon dioxide into the ground.

Because the manufacture of the byproducts elsewhere normally results in greenhouse emissions, Skyonic says it is saving an additional 225,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions yearly from occurring. The total of 300,000 tons of carbon savings yearly is equal to removing 62,000 passenger cars from roads, according to the company.

“This clearly is an important step in achieving greenhouse gas reductions,” said Sean Plasynski, director of the U.S. Energy Department’s Strategic Center for Coal. “We are learning by doing (by) moving from concept to commercialization.”

U.S. Rep. Joaquín Castro, D-San Antonio, said the Skyonic-Zachry partnership, along with public and private investments, is “a model for many years to come for many projects.”

Baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate, can be used to manufacture glass and some types of paper, paints, plastics and animal feed. It also can be used to process uranium. Hydrochloric acid can be used to make steel, in gold mining and the hydraulic-fracturing process of drilling for oil and natural gas. Bleach can be sold to water utilities for purification.

Skyonic has 10-year contracts to sell all of its products, mainly to national companies and some in Houston’s huge chemical market, said Stacy MacDiarmid, Skyonic communications director. The company expects to operate successfully in its first quarter, MacDiarmid said. The company now will begin the commissioning process and ramping up for production and will be in operation by year’s end, she added.

The Capitol SkyMine plant was built by Bangkok-based Toyo-Thai Corp., which plans to replicate the plant elsewhere.

SkyMine received two U.S. Energy Department grants totaling $28 million.

Other investors are ConocoPhillips Co., Cenovus Energy, Bluecap Partners, Energy Technology Ventures, Berg & Berg Enterprises, Northwater Capital Management, BP Ventures and PVS Chemicals.

A $4 million to $10 million expansion of SkyMine already has been announced. The expansion is called SkyCycle. While SkyMine uses electricity to mineralize the cement plant emissions, SkyCycle will use waste heat.

SkyCycle, a demonstration project, will increase the plant’s capacity by only 7 percent when it goes into operation in late 2015. But the SkyCycle technology is expected to capture carbon dioxide from factory smokestacks at between $16 and $25 per ton, lower than current costs of $150-$450 per ton, the company said.

Jones has said Skyonic technologies can be applied to other types of factories and electricity-generating utilities burning coal or natural gas.

dhendricks@express-news.net