DOE, AIR PRODUCTS HIT FULL CAPACITY AT PORT ARTHUR

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
4/26/13

The Department of Energy’s first large-scale, integrated carbon capture and storage demonstration project to come online reached full capacity earlier this month. Project operator Air Products and Chemicals brought the second of two steam methane reformers online in March at its Port Arthur retrofit project on Texas’ Gulf Coast, and CCS operations at the unit were ramped up to full capacity this month, according to National Energy Technology Laboratory Project Manager Anthony Zinn. He said the hydrogen production facility’s two reformers are now operating at full capacity, capturing and storing CO2 at a rate of 1 million tonnes per year. “The plant is near full capacity at this time in terms of CO2 capture,” Zinn told GHG Monitor this week.

Zinn said that since the CCS portion of the pre-existing facility began operations late last year, DOE and Air Products have overseen the capture and storage of more than 187,000 tonnes of CO2 to date. “As with most any large-scale project, there have been some minor issues that have popped up and required resolution. However, overall the project has progressed nearly as scheduled and appears to be operating as expected,” he said. Air Products did not respond to requests for comment about the status of the project. 

Denbury Using CO2 for EOR in Texas

CCS operations began at the $430 million industrial capture retrofit in December, making it the first within DOE’s eight-project CCS demonstration portfolio to begin full-scale operations. The CO2 captured from the Valero Energy Corp.-owned hydrogen production facility is expected to produce roughly three million additional barrels of oil annually for Denbury Resources, which has linked the hydrogen production facility to its pre-existing Green Pipeline. The Plano, Texas-based company said it will use the CO2 for enhanced oil recovery operations at its West Hastings oilfield southeast of Houston. To date, there have not been any issues with transporting the CO2 via Denbury’s pipeline, Zinn said this week. “The project has so far shown that existing, proven technologies can be scaled up and combined to meet a project’s objectives,” he said.

ICCS Program Sees Hurdles, Despite Port Arthur’s Status

The Port Arthur facility and its current operational status has been labeled as a success story for the Department’s Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage (ICCS) program, which has seen some negative publicity in recent weeks. A DOE Inspector General audit report released last month was very critical of the program, saying that the Department has “not always effectively managed” the projects receiving stimulus funding under the scheme. “Specifically, the Department had not implemented certain performance monitoring controls that would have allowed for more thorough reviews of costs prior to reimbursement,” the IG said in the March 26 report.

Port Arthur is one of three demonstration-scale industrial capture projects being funded by the ICCS program. Archer Daniels Midland is currently submitting paperwork to state regulators for permission to inject at its $208 million retrofit project, which plans on capturing CO2 from an ethanol plant in Decatur, Ill., for geologic sequestration in the Mount Simon sandstone formation. That project is expected to begin CCS operations in the first quarter of 2014. The third industrial capture endeavor, Leucadia’s $2.5 billion Lake Charles project, could achieve financial close later this year. That project would build a new petroleum coke-to-chemicals gasification plant with carbon capture that would produce methanol near Lake Charles, La., before also linking up to Denbury’s Green Pipeline.