Ohio State CCS Project Update

Washington, D.C. — Researchers at The Ohio State University (OSU) have successfully completed more than 200 hours of continuous operation of their patented Coal-Direct Chemical Looping (CDCL) technology - a one-step process to produce both electric power and high-purity carbon dioxide (CO2). The test, led by OSU Professor Liang-Shih Fan, represents the longest integrated operation of chemical looping technology anywhere in the world to date.

The test was conducted at OSU’s 25 kilowatt thermal (kWt) CDCL combustion sub-pilot unit under the auspices of DOE’s Carbon Capture Program, which is developing innovative environmental control technologies to foster the use of the nation’s vast coal reserves. Managed by the Office of Fossil Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, the program’s specific goal is to develop CO2 capture and compression technologies that can reduce the capital cost and energy penalty of CO2 capture by more than half—equivalent to CO2 capture at less than $40 per metric ton—when integrated into a new or existing coal fired power plant. The successful test moves chemical-looping a step closer to full scale.

Chemical looping is an advanced technology that offers several advantages over traditional combustion. In a chemical-looping system, a metal oxide, such as an iron oxide, provides the oxygen for combustion. The metal oxide releases its oxygen in a fuel reactor with a reducing atmosphere, and the oxygen reacts with the fuel. The reduced metal cycles back to an oxidation chamber where the metal oxide is regenerated by contact with air. The metal oxide is then reintroduced into the fuel reactor, thus completing the loop. Since CO2 separation occurs simultaneously with coal conversion, chemical looping offers a low-cost scheme for carbon capture. The process can produce power, synthesis gas, or hydrogen in addition to high-purity CO2.

OSU reports that the CDCL plant’s 200+ hours of operation, using metallurgical coke and subbituminous and lignite coals, shows the robustness of its novel moving-bed design and non-mechanical valve operation. The combination resulted in nearly 100 percent solid fuel conversion and a CO2 stream more than 99 percent pure, making it applicable to CO2 enhanced oil recovery operations.

The OSU project is expected to benefit the DOE Carbon Capture Program by identifying oxygen carriers and a chemical looping process having the potential to control multiple pollutants, including sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), along with CO2. OSU research aims to identify potential barriers and optimize the CDCL technology and provide realistic data for future technological and economic analysis.

In addition to DOE, OSU is partnering on the project with the Ohio Department of Development, Babcock & Wilcox Power Generation Group, Inc., CONSOL Energy Inc., and Clear Skies Consulting LLC.

In a related project, DOE’s National Carbon Capture Center in Wilsonville, Ala., will serve as the host site for the construction and operation of a fully integrated 250 kWt pressurized syngas chemical looping pilot unit starting this year. The facility will be used to further prove the operability and economic feasibility of OSU’s advanced chemical looping technologies.

Source: NETL

SaskPower CCUS Project Update

According to a Reuters report yesterday, the carbon capture facility being constructed by Saskatchewan's SaskPower at the Boundary Dam power station will be ready to launch by April 2014.  SaskPower is doing a $1.24 billion retrofit of the 45-year-old plant to capture one million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide as well as sulphur dioxide. When completed, Boundary Dam will be the world's first coal-fired power plant with a commercial scale carbon capture component. SaskPower officials believe the addition of carbon capture will reduce the total power output of the plant by approximately 25 percent, according to Reuters. Officials also stated that the cost of retrofitting the plant, which will reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 90 percent, were approximately the same as constructing a comparable plant powered by natural gas. SaskPower announced last month that it has agreed to sell the captured CO2 to Canadian oil company Cenovus Energy for use in enhaced oil recovery. Read more

CCUS/EOR Project Begins in Texas

Washington, D.C. — A breakthrough carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) project in Texas has begun capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) and piping it to an oilfield for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR). 

The project at Air Products and Chemicals hydrogen production facility in Port Arthur, Texas, is significant for demonstrating both the effectiveness and commercial viability of CCUS technology as an option in helping mitigate atmospheric CO2 emissions. Funded in part through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the project is managed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. DOE is collaborating with industry in cost-sharing arrangements to demonstrate these next-generation technologies.  

This event marks a milestone in DOE’s Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage (ICCS) program: progressing beyond research and development to a demonstration scale that can be readily replicated and deployed into commercial practice within the industry. Goals of the ICCS program are to mitigate climate change through CCUS; create jobs; and position the United States as a world leader in carbon capture technologies.  

In the Air Products project, CO2 that would ordinarily be released to the atmosphere is separated from the gas stream of one of the company’s steam methane reformers using a gas-separation technology called "vacuum swing adsorption." After compression and drying, the CO2 purity is greater than 97 percent, concentrated from an initial 10–20 percent. The CO2 is then transported through Denbury Green Pipeline – Texas, LLC’s pipeline for injection into the Denbury Onshore operated West Hastings Unit, an EOR project in Texas.

When an oil well begins "playing out," not enough oil is pumped to make it worthwhile to continue using the well, and the well is closed or "shut in," even though much of the original oil in the field remains in the formation. Several methods of enhanced oil recovery have been developed to recover this remaining oil, including pumping CO2 down to the oil reservoir. In the Port Arthur project, a monitoring, verification, and accounting program will ensure that the injected CO2 remains underground, safely and permanently trapped in the same geologic formation that confined the oil brought to the surface in the demonstration. 

In 2009, during the first phase of DOE’s ICCS program, 12 projects were chosen to receive ARRA funding to expedite or carry out large-scale CCUS from industrial sources. After 7 months, a competitive evaluation was undertaken, and in 2010, Air Products was selected as one of three companies to enter Phase 2 and continue receiving funding for a commercial demonstration project.  

Specific advantages of the Air Products demonstration project include:

• Capturing approximately 1 million metric tons of CO2 per year that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere; and 

• Recovering 1.6-3.1 million additional barrels of domestic oil annually. 

When other companies join with Air Products and begin CO2 capture and utilization, these numbers will increase. Air Products plans to begin CO2 capture at a second steam methane reformer within its Port Arthur facility in the next several months. 

Source: NETL

Canadian Government Invests in CCS Company

Quebec-based CO2 Solutions Inc. today announced that the Canadian government has made a $4.7 million investment to support the development of the company's enzyme-enabled carbon capture technology in the Alberta oil sands.  CO2 Solutions is developing carbon capture technology for use in oil sands production, including in-situ methods and bitumen upgrading. According to a company press release, results from the project will also support the broader application of CO2 Solutions' technology in other natural gas combustion sources, such as gas-fired power plants. CO2 Solutions’ management anticipates the overall cost of the project to be $7.5 million. The company announced earlier this month that it will receive $348,000 in nonreimbursable funding from Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program. The funding will be used to support the ongoing development of CO2 Solutions’ technology, including enzyme evolution and enzyme management process optimization work and will be disbursed over the next twelve months.

Source: CO2 Solutions

U.S. Gov't Releases National Climate Assessment

A 60-person Federal Advisory Committee (The "National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee" or NCADAC) has overseen the development of this draft climate report.

The NCADAC, whose members are available here (and in the report), was established under the Department of Commerce in December 2010 and is supported through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It is a federal advisory committee established as per the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972. The Committee serves to oversee the activities of the National Climate Assessment. Its members are diverse in background, expertise, geography and sector of employment. A formal record of the committee can be found at the NOAA NCADAC website.

The NCADAC has engaged more than 240 authors in the creation of the report. The authors are acknowledged at the beginning of the chapters they co-authored.

Following extensive review by the National Academies of Sciences and by the public, this report will be revised by the NCADAC and, after additional review, will then be submitted to the Federal Government for consideration in the Third National Climate Assessment (NCA) Report.  For more information on the NCA process and background, previous assessments and other NCA information, please explore the NCA web-pages. The NCA is being conducted under the auspices of the Global Change Research Act of 1990 and is being organized and administered by the Global Change Research Program.

The previous Assessment produced the report Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States in 2009, and the first National Assessment report was completed in 2000.  To see these previous reports, please click here.

Ontario Continues its Curtailment of Coal

The Canadian province of Ontario has announced that it will shut down 17 of its 19 coal-powered energy plants by then end of the year and will discontinue using coal as a source of electricity production by 2014. Since 2003, Ontario has cut its use of coal by nearly 90 per cent. According to a press release from the office of Ontatrio Premier Dalton McGuinty, the closures are a result of Ontario's strong conservation efforts, smarter electricity distribution technology and a diverse supply of cleaner energy. The government estimates that shutting down the last coal plants in Southern Ontario will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save the province $95 million. Researchers also predict Ontario's electricity sector greenhouse gas emissions will decrease dramatically as a result of eliminating coal-fired power, from a high of 41.4 megatonnes in 2000 to only five megatonnes post-2020. Read more

IEA Renews Call for Action on CCS

As high cost and simultaneous lack of incentive policies delay the deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, the International Energy Agency has renewed its calls for action in 2013 and beyond on what the organization says is a critical element to limiting climate change.

An immediate priority, according to the IEA, is implementation of the organization's recommended policy and action on storage site selection and development, so that the approval process for storage sites does not impede new CCS installations. Governments must also assess what role CCS will play in their energy futures and increase their efforts in large-scale demonstration.

But perhaps the most critically important short-term issue, according to the IEA, is to develop practical incentive policies, with successful policies for renewable energy potentially serving as models for CCS deployment. The IEA provides detailed plans about development, investment and deployment in its Roadmap series as well as its technology flagship publications, Energy Technology Perspectives 2012. The IEA is revising its CCS technology roadmap, with the new version expected in spring 2013.

Source: IEA