Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
6/13/2014
The Department of Energy and Southern Company will be working together to test both pre- and post-combustion carbon capture technologies, as well as coal gasification technologies, for the next five years under a new cooperative agreement signed this week. The research will be managed by the National Energy Technology Laboratory and Southern Company and will take place at the National Carbon Capture Center in Wilsonville, Ala. The project proposal was submitted by Southern Co. in response to an August 2013 funding opportunity announcement by the DOE. DOE will contribute $150 million dollars to the cost-sharing project and Southern Company will add $37 million in their own funding.
Through the agreement work will be done at the NCCC to:
- Demonstrate integrated coal-based energy technology for plants with clean coal technology, including carbon capture.
- Develop technologies that will subsequently be scaled directly to commercial-sized equipment and/or integrated with commercial projects, including those under DOE’s Clean Coal Power Initiative.
- Advance lower-cost technologies to capture carbon dioxide while enabling affordable, reliable, and clean coal-based power generation for years to come.
To meet these goals, Southern Company will test technologies which they have deemed promising developed by government entities, industry and universities from around the world. NCCC has the ability to test multiple slipstreams from a variety of fuel sources under commercial conditions simultaneously.
Carbon capture and gasification are both to be components at Kemper County Energy Facility, operated by Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company. The plant was due to start full operations this fall, but has been delayed to the first half of next year, with Southern attributing the delay to “labor costs and productivity, adverse weather conditions, shortages and inconsistent quality of equipment, materials, and labor, contractor or supplier delay, non-performance under construction or other agreements, and/or start-up activities for this ‘first-of-a-kind’ technology, including major equipment failure, system integration, and operations, and/or unforeseen engineering problems.”
