Facts:

Main developer: NRG Energy

The project will demonstrate advanced technology to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from a coal-fired power plant.

The project team aims to demonstrate that post-combustion carbon capture can be economically applied to existing power plants—particularly those having the opportunity to sequester CO2 in nearby oil fields—and the viability of sequestration in such formations. The technology would apply to many additional coal-based electric power plants in the United States and throughout the world.

WA Parish at Fort Bend County, Texas has both a coal and natural gas power plant with a net capacity of 2,490 MW (Coal) and 1,175 MW (Natural Gas) and the project will capture carbon dioxide from flue gas equivalent to what a 125 megawatt power plant would emit.

The project will design, construct, and operate a system that will capture and store approximately 400,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Timing

The capture part will be operational by 2012 according to NRG Energy. Sequestration will begin in 2014, with project completion set for 2017.

The technology

NRG's CCS demonstration project at WA Parish will use a class of chemicals known as amines to strip CO2 from flue gas equal in quantity to that of a 60- megawatt power plant. It will be designed to capture more than 90 percent of incoming CO2, or about 400,000 tons of CO2 annually—a level that can further advance the technology's viability on a larger scale.

Gary Rochelle, professor of chemical engineering and head of the university's Luminant Carbon Management Program (LCMP), developed piperazine, one of the amines that will be tested in the new facility as a CO2 stripping agent. The LCMP will subcontract with NRG for up to $650,000 for the carbon capture portion of the project.

Financing and partners

The total project cost is $334 million with the DOE share of the cost being $167 million, or 50 percent of the total.

The Department of Energy has selected NRG Energy, one of the nation's largest electric power providers, to receive up to $167 million of funding (some of which will be from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) to build a post-combustion CO2 capture demonstration unit at the company's WA Parish power plant southwest of Houston. NRG will invest an additional $167 million in the project. A portion of the CO2 from WA Parish's emissions will be scrubbed, transported to a nearby oil field and injected deep underground for EOR and long-term storage. (see link to storage project)

The Bureau of Economic Geology's Gulf Coast Carbon Center will subcontract with NRG to monitor the CO2 during and after injection. The proposed project was submitted under Round 3 of the Clean Coal Power Initiative Program (CCPI), a cost-shared collaboration between the federal government and private industry to demonstrate low-emission carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies in advanced coal-based power generation. The goal of CCPI is to accelerate the readiness of advanced coal technologies for commercial deployment, ensuring that the U.S. has clean, reliable, and affordable electricity and power.

More information and press releases

http://www.rechargenews.com/regions/north_america/article208312.ece

 

http://www.carboncapturejournal.com/displaynews.php?NewsID=587

 

 

 

Companies involved