What is the function of carbon capture technology?

A coal-fired power plant in Texas is on its way to capturing 1. 4 million tons of carbon dioxide that previously would have been released into the air.
   Rather than building an entirely new facility, the Petra Novo project will apply carbon capture technology to an existing coal-fired power plant — helping to advance the technologies that help enable cleaner energy production from fossil energy resources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
   The Houston-area project was awarded $ 167 million from the U. S. Department of Energy to capture emissions from 60 megawatts of generation.
   Project sponsor NRG Energy Inc. and JX Nippon decided they could quadrupled the size of the project — expanding the design to capture the emissions from 240 megawatts of generation — with no additional federal funding.
   When completed, the project has the potential to capture the same amount of CO₂ each year as taking 250, 000 cars off the road.
   Using a process previously tested in a three-year pilot scale test in Alabama, the project will capture up to 90 percent of CO₂ from the power plant. The captured carbon dioxide will then be compressed, dried and transported to an oil field where it will be used to recover previously unreachable oil — a process known as Enhanced Oil Recovery or EOR.