E.On and Siemens are putting a pilot CO2 capture plant into operation at E.On’s Staudinger power plant, near Hanau, Germany. A process so far proven only in the laboratory is to be employed under real operating conditions at unit 5 of the hard coal fired plant, which will send a proportion of its flue gas to the CC unit. E.On and Siemens intend to run the pilot until the end of 2010. The results achieved and the operating performance of the pilot will serve as the basis for large-scale demonstration plants, scheduled to start operation in the middle of the next decade.
The impetus for this expensive technology is the general belief that it will not be possible to meet rapidly growing power demand in the future without using fossil fuels. ‘The challenge is to attain a significant reduction in the CO2 emissions associated with the combustion of fossil fuels said Michael Suess, CEO of the Fossil Power Generation division of Siemens Energy. ‘These technologies are available but they have to be tested for deployment in large plants, developed further and brought to market readiness. The pilot plant in the Staudinger ... will bring us a decisive step forward here’.
‘E.On is planning industrial-scale CO2 capture and storage for coal-fired power plants starting in 2020.’ said Bernhard Fischer, of the managing board of E.On Energie AG. ‘Together with the post-combustion process we are focusing on highly promising CO2 capture technology that can be backfitted in existing power plants.’ The project is being sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Economics under the terms of the COORETEC Initiative which is part of the federal government’s 5th Energy Research Programme ‘Innovation and New Energy Technologies’.
The Siemens post-combustion process is claimed to capture more than 90 % of the CO2, which is removed from the flue gas by special cleaning agents. One of the advantages of this technology is that it can be combined with steam power plant processes. In the CCS pilot plant at the Staudinger plant the cleaning agent’s long-term chemical stability and the efficiency of the process are now being put to the test under real power plant conditions. At the same time the technology will be further optimised in terms of energy consumption. The process is characterised, says Siemens, by good environmental compatibility, comparatively low energy consumption and only very low loss of the cleaning agent used.
Meanwhile Alstom says that it has taken the next step in the commercialisation of carbon capture technology with the start-up of a pilot plant in West Virginia, USA.
The plant can capture around 1800 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year using a proprietary advanced amine technology developed jointly by Alstom and Dow Chemical. Results from the two-year project will help the companies to further develop the technology so that it can be applied to coal-fired power plants around the world.
‘As a leader in carbon capture technology, Alstom is excited to take the next step in commercialising an advanced-amine technology’ said Philippe Joubert, Alstom executive vice president and president of Alstom Power. ‘This pilot plant is designed to evaluate the technology operating under power plant conditions, test proprietary innovations jointly developed by Dow and Alstom and provide data necessary to finalise the design of large-scale demonstration plants that will apply this technology.’
The pilot plant captures CO2 from the flue gas of a coal-fired boiler at a Dow-owned facility in South Charleston and is one of ten CO2 capture demonstration projects in seven countries announced by Alstom in the last few years.
Alstom says that it is aiming to make carbon capture technology commercially available within six years. It signed a joint development agreement with Dow in 2008 to advance the technology.
‘Integrating this process with new advanced coal and gas fired power generation equipment will allow customers to minimise CO2 emissions while generating electricity as cost effectively as possible’ said Joubert.
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