AEP Sets Largest Carbon-Capture Test at Coal Plant
Date: 16-Mar-07
Country: US
Author: Michael Erman
AEP, the largest US producer of coal-fired power, signed a memorandum of understanding to use French engineering company Alstom's chilled ammonia process at two of its plants. The company will then store the carbon dioxide underground.
"We need to go forward and prove out -- not only for ourselves, but also for the industry -- that this technology will, in fact, work," AEP Chief Executive Michael Morris told reporters.
Morris said it was the the perfect time to move ahead with these sorts of projects, given the talk in the US Congress of possible legislation to reduce greenhouse gases.
"Six months ago we might not have been this bullish," he said.
No technology is currently commercially available for power producers to use to capture and hold carbon dioxide emitted by their plants. Carbon dioxide is the main heat-trapping gas that scientists believe causes global warming.
Emissions of the gas by US power producers rose about 27 percent between 1990 and 2004 and can be expected to increase further as new coal-fired power plants are built, according to a report released last year by environmental investor coalition Ceres, the National Resources Defense Coalition and Public Service Enterprise Group Inc.
Coal-fired plants produce significantly more greenhouse gases than other types of power plants.
HUGE ECONOMIC RISK
Morris said utilities would face substantial risks if they didn't take part in developing technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions from their plants. He said without technology to retrofit existing plants, new legislation could force power generators to shut down coal plants.
"In my estimation, that would have a huge economic impact globally, because we would have an insufficient amount of gigawatt hours to satisfy worldwide energy demand," Morris said.
The Alstom technology turns carbon dioxide into a liquid by compressing it at a pressure of over 1,000 pounds per square inch. It can then be injected into the ground for storage.
In mid-2008, AEP and Alstom plan to install the technology first on a 30-megawatt thermal slipstream at its Mountaineer plant in West Virginia, which would capture around the same amount of carbon dioxide if the process were used on a 10-megawatt electric unit.
That test is expected to capture up to 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year.
After the completion of that test, AEP plans to install Alstom's system at one of the 450-megawatt coal units at its Northeastern plant in Oklahoma. It expects that project to be operational in late 2011.
Morris said he expects the Mountaineer portion of the project, which could cost US$50 million to US$70 million, to be funded fully by the government and Alstom.
He said the Northeastern test could cost about US$250 million to $300 million for the carbon dioxide capture and compression, as well as about US$225 million to $300 million for other equipment required for the test. He hopes that the US Department of Energy will be a partner in the project, along with AEP and Alstom.
Carbon dioxide captured at the Northeastern test -- expected to be up to 1.5 million metric tons a year -- would be used by an oil producer in enhanced oil recovery, AEP said.
