POWER July 2017 - 13

separate complaint accusing Russia of not utilizing booked transit
capacity for gas supplies intended for Europe, calling for Gazprom
to provide compensation. Ultimately, Gazprom claimed $44 billion
from Ukraine, and Naftogaz claimed about $28 billion from
Gazprom.
The final ruling issued on May 31 from the Arbitration Institute
of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce was highly watched
because it has major implications for Europe's future natural gas
supplies. Ukrainian officials told reporters that the tribunal rejected
Gazprom's " take-or-pay " demands, which required it to
pay for volumes of gas not imported. But on June 6, the Russian
News Agency quoted Gazprom Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev as
saying " They say that the arbitration court revoked take-or-pay,
it's not so. They did not cancel 'take-or-pay' (principle). "
The case concerning Ukraine's elevated transit fee for supplies
to Europe is still ongoing. For now, Ukraine is pairing with Poland
to develop a regional gas hub, which will have prices aligned
with European standards, as one way to end Central and Eastern
Europe's dependence on Russian gas. Meanwhile, Russia is banking
on Nord Stream 2, a pipeline it anticipates will come into
service at the end of 2019 to siphon gas from the Russian coast
along the Baltic Sea to the German shore, bypassing Ukraine.
This April, Gazprom and five European companies-France's
Engie, Austria's OMV, British-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, and Germany's
Uniper and Wintershall-signed an agreement on a new
financing model for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. If
built, the pipeline would pose severe revenue hurdles for Naftogaz,
as it would slash transit flow through Ukraine.
Researchers: Power Plant CarbonCapturing
Calcium Carbonate Looping
Technology Almost Market Ready
A novel demonstration underway at Technische Universität Darmstadt
(TU Darmstadt), a research university in Darmstadt, Germany,
has shown a calcium carbonate looping (CCL) technology
retrofitted at existing power plants to curb emissions of carbon
dioxide (CO2
) released during the combustion of fossil fuels is
nearly ready for the market.
The technology is part of Project SCARLET ( " Scale up of Calcium
Carbonate Looping Technology for Efficient CO2
Capture
from Power and Industrial Plants " ), a three-year research project
funded by the European Union to obtain reliable information for
the scale-up of CCL.
CCL is essentially a post-combustion carbon capture technology
involving two chemical reactions continuously running in
two interconnected fluidized bed reactors. " In the first fluidized
bed reactor, the absorber, a powder of burnt lime or calcium oxide
(CaO), is contacted with the CO2
in the power station exhaust
to form calcium carbonate (CaCO3). The calcium carbonate then
is transferred in the second of the two fluidized bed reactors,
known as the regenerator, where high temperatures force out the
CO2
bound as the calcium carbonate thereby producing burnt lime
and CO2 once again, " the university said. " The released CO2
can
then be used for other purposes or stored whilst the burnt lime
is returned to the first fluidized bed reactor. The material needs
to be replaced after several dozen cycles, but the depleted lime
can then be used in cement production making it a valuable raw
material rather than a waste product. "
So far, researchers at TU Darmstadt have developed the technical
prerequisites for the industrial deployment for the CCL process
through testing at a 1-MW experimental facility (Figure 4). Model
calculations and computer simulations show that the new process
July 2017 | POWER
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is more cost-effective and energy efficient than competing processes,
they claim. Project SCARLET will now embark on tests at a
bigger 20-MW pilot project at the coal-fired Émile Huchet power
plant in Saint-Avold, France.
" We need 80 kilograms of lime to capture one tonne of CO2
, "
explained Professor Bernd Epple of the TU Darmstadt's Institute
for Energy Systems and Energy Technology. " The current process
costs amount to around 20 to 27 euro per tonne of CO2
. Other
processes are more expensive and less efficient. Through SCARLET
we have succeeded in moving the [CCL] process a major step
forward towards market readiness. "
The team is now evaluating concepts for the utilization of the
recovered CO2. The university noted that the price per tonne of
CO2 is currently very low on the global markets. " At this point,
any power plant operators making use of the process would not
be in a position to be able to sell the captured CO2
at a rate that
would enable them to break even, let alone make a profit. It
would have to be stored or reprocessed. "
According to Professor Epple, the possibilities are vast. " We're
considering using the CO2 directly for the production of methanol, "
he said. " Global market prices for methanol are higher than
those for CO2
. "
Researchers Develop Hybrid Salinity
Gradient Power Technology
A hybrid technology created by researchers at Penn State University
could be the breakthrough needed to advance efforts to
produce power based on the salt concentrations between two
water sources.
www.powermag.com
13
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POWER July 2017

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