Bryce Anzelmo, PhD (RECS 2013)

PhD Student, Stanford University (2013), Energy Engineer, Stealth (2020)

“Excited, unfamiliar faces around lead by a woman unknown in person to all of us. We filled a bus with our assumptions, hypotheses and opinions of what we were about to experience. RECS 2013 brought us all together, the glue that bounded our various backgrounds, knowledge and dispositions. Left turn off the main road lead us down a gravel road. Trees off in the distance masked our view of what was to come. Right turn greeted us with a security gate. We sat there engulfed with an up close view of a coal fired power plant. Large stacks, piping, water, lots of activity all around. Through the gate we went, onto the grounds of our first multi-gigawatt power plant. Eyes looking around like a child in a toy store. Active minds limited the movement of our lips. Ideas and thoughts moved at the speed of light as we tried to soak it all in. Our minds like a household sponge being hit with a fire hose, trying to absorb it all to no avail. Assumptions replaced by the reality before us.

A herd of curious students being shuttled around by worker bees of the generation plant raised more questions then answers had time to permit. A complete picture was painted right in front of our eyes. A picture that would allow us to pollenate the general public with facts, not assumptions, about how modern day electricity is generated. A behind the scenes look at the backbone of electrical generation around the world. One of the missing puzzle pieces for all of us studying the field of energy be it policy, engineering, economics or geology. We were blown away by what we saw. The network of pipes working in unison to deliver a means for a light blub to work properly. Working harder then ever to charge our increasing need of electronics.

Our mission as the next generation is to complete the mission with clean energy sources. The motivation for us being here today was to investigate how carbon dioxide could be captured and utilized. The capture of carbon dioxide will not be an insurance policy for fossil fuel generation, but a piece of the pie in order to reduce the potential for global climate change. As we walked around, a little piece of all of us changed for the better. The picture being painted will never be fully complete and it has a long way to go, but we are optimistic that the future holds great innovation. Building the networks and experiences that the RECS program has provided will be orders of magnitude more beneficial than we could ever speculate. ”