The U.S. Department of Energy announced $17.6 million in funding for six projects addressing some of the operational challenges associated with commercially available carbon capture technologies.

The projects, which will be managed by the National Energy Technology Laboratory, involve testing solvent and membrane technologies that will focus on increasing reliability and reducing the cash and energy cost of capturing carbon dioxide.

DOE will provide roughly $3 million each to the University of Kentucky Research Foundation, Membrane Technology and Research Inc., SRI International, the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, Gas Technology Institute in Illinois and Linde LLC.

The department also recently announced $6.5 million in funding for nine coal pilot projects and $44 million in funding for cost-shared research and development for advanced carbon capture technology.