Public Power - September 2008 - (Page 30)

Capturing Coal’s Carbon infrastructure on the Gulf Coast.” Carbon dioxide has a real commercial value today because of enhanced oil recovery, said Stokes. “Over the long term, incentives and the regulatory structure will make straight storage an option as well,” he added. According to analysis by Advanced Resources International, by 2020 enhanced oil recovery could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 200 million tons per year—the equivalent of CO2 emissions from 100 coalfired power plants. It also would add 260 million barrels per year of incremental domestic oil production and increase domestic natural gas production by 1.1 trillion cubic feet per year. Powerspan’s post-combustion carbon capture technology is not the only game in town, however. Alstom Power Inc., a power equipment supplier, has developed a process that—like Powerspan’s—is ammonia-based. But there is a difference between the two. An important factor in the environmental impact and process economics of using ammonia for carbon dioxide capture is managing the ammonia vapor, said Alstom technology will be demonstrated in a pilot project at a 1,210-MW coal-fired plant in Wisconsin. Alstom has partnered with We Energies, the plant owner, and the Electric Power Research Institute, which will conduct an engineering and environmental performance and cost analysis during the one-year project. EPRI will evaluate the system’s performance and support the development of technological and economic analyses associated with applying the carbon-capture process on a commercial scale, primarily to larger coal-fired power plants. Alstom has designed and built a 1.7-MW system to capture less than 1 percent of the flue gas from one 617-MW unit of the twounit Pleasant Prairie plant. The project will run for about one year, with results to be published in mid-2009. The captured carbon dioxide will be compressed, making it available for commercial use—such as enhanced oil recovery—or sequestration. “Developing cost-effective carbon capture technology is one of the most important environmental challenges facing the utility industry in the 21st century and captured carbon dioxide will be sold to SemGreen for enhanced oil recovery. Post-combustion carbon capture and storage technologies could be one of the most cost-effective solutions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions while allowing continued use of the nation’s coal resources. But how cost effective? Market incentives for CO2 emission reduction—such as a carbon tax, emissions offsets and emissions credits—will help to offset the costs of carbon capture and storage, but those costs, nevertheless, will remain high with current technology, according to DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. In a January 2008 report, NETL estimated the cost of retrofitting coal-fired power plants for carbon dioxide capture using the Energy Information Administration’s National Energy Modeling System. The cost for retrofitting included direct costs (capital and O&M), indirect costs (capacity and heat rate penalties) and a nominal cost for transportation, injection, measurement, monitoring and verification. According to the analysis, the penetration of retrofits across the fleet would not One appeal of the carbon capture technology was its enhanced oil recovery (EOR)-friendly design. Stephanie Procopis, a spokeswoman for Powerspan. That vapor is released in the scrubbing and regeneration steps of the process. To minimize the generation of ammonia vapor, the Alstom process chills the ammonia, which cools the entire flue gas flow. Powerspan’s process uses proprietary vapor management techniques to absorb ammonia vapor for reuse or scrubbing of sulfur dioxide in an ammonia-based scrubbing process. According to Procopis, the Powerspan technology avoids the energy penalty of cooling the flue gas stream. In laboratory testing, Alstom’s process has shown the potential to capture more than 90 percent of CO2 at a cost that is far less than other carbon capture technologies, the company said. Pleasant Prairie demonstration. The 30 SEPTEMBER 2008 it’s important that we take steps now to achieve a long-term technology solution,” said Gale Klappa, chairman, president and CEO of Wisconsin Energy, parent company of We Energies. Other demonstrations. Following the Wisconsin pilot, Alstom had planned to demonstrate its technology at American Electric Power’s 1,300-MW Mountaineer coal-fired plant in West Virginia. However, the state’s Public Service Commission said in 2008 that uncertainty surrounding the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions made it more reasonable to wait until such requirements are in place. AEP said it plans to install the Alstom technology at its 450-MW coal-fired Northeastern plant in Oklahoma. The system is expected to be operational by 2012, and the occur to any significant extent until carbon emission allowance prices exceeded $30 a metric ton of CO2 equivalent. About onethird of the coal fleet capacity would be retrofitted at $45/metric ton of CO2 equivalent and about one half of the fleet at $60/metric ton of CO2 equivalent. Retrofitting resulted in the avoidance of 128 gigawatts of coal plant retirements through 2030 at $45/metric ton of CO2 equivalent and 149 gigawatts at $60/metric ton of CO 2 equivalent, according to NETL’s analysis. This result was offset by capacity deratings of 30 percent for the retrofitted plants, or 30 gigawatts and 50 gigawatts, respectively. The total capture cost per unit of CO2 captured decreases as the CO2 removal level increases. By 2012, NETL’s goal is to develop techPUBLIC POWER

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public Power - September 2008

Public Power - September 2008 Contents Perspective 10 Questions What’s Good About RTOs? Capturing Coal’s Carbon Carbon Safety Valves Greater Glass, Greater Savings Getting Customers to Embrace Compact Fluorescent Lights LEEDing Green Kansas City Shows How to Build Green For Governing Boards Safety Community Broadband Hometown Connections Parting Shot

Public Power - September 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.