Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
9/4/2015
The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory this week announced the selection of eight projects to receive $24.7 million in combined funding for small- and large-scale pilot projects on reducing the cost of carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and compression. Funding will be provided through DOE’s Carbon Capture Program. The projects selected are comprised of one supersonic compression systems pilot, one small pilot-scale post-combustion CO2 capture project, and six large pilot-scale post-combustion CO2 capture projects.
DOE will contribute $4 million to the Dresser-Rand Co. for its supersonic compression systems pilot project. The company will “design, build, and test a pilot-scale, supersonic CO2 compressor applicable to new and existing coal-based electric generating plants,” according to a DOE press release.
FuelCell Energy will receive $15 million in DOE funding to support the development of a small (from 0.5 to 5 MWe) pilot-scale project that will utilize the company’s “combined electric power and CO2 separation (CEPACS) system, based on electrochemical membrane (ECM) technology, to separate at least 90 percent of CO2 from a 3 MWe equivalent slipstream of pulverized coal plant flue gas and achieve 95 percent CO2 purity at a cost of $40/tonne of CO2 captured and at a cost of electricity 30 percent less than baseline CO2 capture approaches,” DOE said.
Six large pilot-scale post combustion capture projects have been selected. These projects will test on a 10 to 25 plus MWe equivalent slipstream.
The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois has been awarded $1 million in DOE funding for a large pilot-scale project that will “capture approximately 500 tonnes per day of CO2 with a 90 percent capture rate from existing coal-fired boilers at the Abbott Power Plant on the campus of the University of Illinois using Linde/BASF’s cost-effective, energy-efficient, compact amine-based advanced CO2 capture absorption system,” according to the release.
The University of Kentucky Research Foundation will receive $999,070 to “design, fabricate, install, and test a large-pilot facility that will illustrate an innovative carbon capture system integrated with an operating power plant,” the release says.
The department awarded $1 million to NRG Energy. The company teamed up with Inventys to test its VeloxoTherm process, which Inventys bills as the world’s first post-combustion CO2 capture process that uses structured adsorbents. NRG will install the VeloxoTherm technology on one of its Gulf Coast power plants.
With $922,709 in DOE funding, Alstom will run a three-year large-scale pilot-plant program with the aim of “improving the attractiveness and lowering the overall cost of Alstom’s chilled ammonia process (CAP) CO2 capture technology,” according to the release.
Southern Co. will receive $707,207 in DOE funding to “test improvements to CCS processes using an existing 25 MWe, amine-based CO2 capture process at [the company’s] Plant Barry,” DOE said.
DOE will provide $982,040 to General Electric for validation testing of the company’s aminosilicone CO2 capture system. “A successful test will achieve two important results: (1) a closed heat and material balance that will validate performance claims, and (2) sustained operation and performance that will de-risk the technology. A validated aminosilicone system will represent a value proposition relative to aqueous amines in certain applications and enable commercial deployments on a short time frame,” the press release says.