US utility Tenaska is proposing to build the nation’s first new commercial coal plant to capture and store CO2 and use it for enhanced oil recovery applications.
The Texas-based utility says the advanced supercritical Tenaska Trailbalzer Energy Center plant would capture 90 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions. It would be built at a cost of $3 billion if Tenaska decides to go ahead with the project.
Tenaska has filed an air permit application for the plant and says it will make a final decision to proceed with the project in 2009 based on factors such as the availability of local, state and federal incentives; final project cost estimates; and projected market prices for electricity and CO2.
The project appears to be economically feasible aased on current estimates of these factors, says Tenaska.
The Trailblazer Energy Center will generate 765 MW gross, 600 MW net. It will capture, dehydrate and compress 85-90 per cent of the CO2 produced and transport it via pipeline to Permian Basin oil fields in west Texas for use in enhanced oil recovery.
The volume of CO2 recovered from the plant and sold to oil producers could recover enough oil to add more than $1 billion/year of oil production to the economy, says Tenaska.
Helen Manroe, manager of business development for Tenaska pointed out that the Tenaska Trailblazer Energy Center’s captured CO2 “will make a major contribution to the Sweetwater and west Texas economies.
“The carbon dioxide produced and captured by this product will enable Texas to increase oil production and thus reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil,” said Manroe.
Construction of the plant, near Sweetwater in Nolan County, Texas, could start in 2009 and be operational in 2014. It will use low-sulphur sub-bituminous Powder River Basin coal and dry cooling technology to minimize water consumption.
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