The example of the power plant was given by the xprize site just as an example. Like you said, yes, you cant replace fossil fuel burners in a power plant thats generating electricity because the torches will require power from the plant. but what i was saying is substitute fossil fuel burner in power plant for just fossil fuel burner in say a smelting plant or anywhere where the fossil fuel burner is used as a heat source to smelt or transform some material, vs generate electricity via steam or to generate thrust.

In that case you could replace the burner, and effectively capture 100% of the carbon the burner was outputting because it wont exist anymore.

Why worry about capturing carbon from a fossil fuel burner if you can just eliminate the fossil fuel burner with something that doesnt produce any carbon at all. thats the only 100% effective solution to the problem. complete mitigation.

Imagine if Teslas goal to transition the world to cleaner energy was to just put a device on your internal combustion engine car that captures all the carbon it outputs and stores it in a tank you had to empty of some neutralized waste product and we keep buring gasoline forever.

no, they didnt do that, they eliminated the combustion engine entirely and mitigated the carbon output of the engine 100% with a much more elegant solution.

PYR will do the same thing to industries that use heat to manufacture.