PORTSMOUTH – At a time when public support is mounting for capping carbon dioxide on power plants and more federal regulations are expected, Powerspan Corp. is preparing to begin the first demonstrations of its ECO2 technology, a system that attaches to coal-fired power plant stacks and traps CO2.

A one megawatt pilot-scale unit installed at the R.E. Burger Plant in Ohio under operation of FirstEnergy Corp. will go online next month and trap 20 tons of CO2 a day.

Powerspan, a Portsmouth company started in 2004, added 30 jobs this year to grow to 85 employees and has more projects on the table.

The company is conducting studies for $200 million commercial-scale demonstrations of ECO2 at Antelope Valley Station in North Dakota under Basin Electric Power Cooperative and the WA Parish plant in Texas under NRG Energy, operational in 2012 and able to trap a million tons of CO2 a year.

Powerspan wants to use the demonstrations to sell the ECO2 to larger 500-megawatt plants that yield 5 million tons of CO2 a year, CEO and cofounder Frank Alix said.

Carbon dioxide emissions from power plants are unregulated at the federal level, but that could soon change and supercharge sales of the company's multi-million dollar technologies, he said.

"We anticipate that CO2 legislation will be passed in the next administration, whether Senator (Barack) Obama or Senator (John) McCain becomes President," Alix said. "A number of legislative proposals have been introduced in the Senate and House, some of which call for 80 percent reduce in greenhouse gas emission by 2050."

Alix started Powerspan Corp. in 2004 and put into operation the first phase of its core technology, the ECO or Electro-Catalytic Oxidation unit, a 50-megawatt unit that removes nitrogen and sulfur oxides, mercury and particulates, on one of R.E. Burger's two 156-megawatt coal-fired boiler stacks.

The company to date has raised $60 million through private equity including The Beacon Group of New Jersey, FirstEnergy Corp. of Ohio, NGEN Partners LLC. of New York, Calvert Group of Maryland, Rockport Capital Partners of Boston, Fluor Corp. of Texas, and Angeleno Group of Calif.

Powerspan, founded in 1994 as Zero Emissions Technology Inc., was renamed Powerspan Corp. in 2000

Tom Feeley, a technology manager at National Energy Technology Lab, said a handful of companies, including Alstom Corp. of France, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America Inc. of New York, and Babcock and Wilcox Co. of Virginia, are developing CO2 capture technologies, but so far none has "been commercially demonstrated at a 500-megawatt power plant and been shown to perform up to specs."