Mississippi Power’s Kemper County Energy Facility carbon capture and storage project last week generated its first electricity using syngas produced in its second gasifier. “This is a substantial step forward for the project,” Mississippi Power Chairman, President, and CEO Anthony Wilson said in a press release. “We are now closer to integrating all of the systems at the facility to deliver on our mission to provide clean, reliable energy for our customers. I cannot be happier with this step in the process.”
The utility in October produced electricity from syngas in the first of the plant’s two gasifiers.
The project, a new-build, pre-combustion CCS facility near the city of Meridian, has been producing energy with natural gas for two years. Once fully operational, the plant will use Mississippi lignite, a low-rank brown coal, to produce electricity. It will employ a custom integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) system to create syngas and CCS technology to reduce the plant’s emissions to roughly that of natural gas.
The plant is expected to be operational by Dec. 31, according to the company’s most recent estimate. “The remaining major milestones for the IGCC include successful carbon capture and integration of all systems necessary for both combustion turbines to simultaneously generate electricity with syngas,” the Mississippi Power release says.
The project was initially billed at $2.4 billion and would have reached full operation in May 2014 under its original timeline. The total estimated price tag is now nearly $6.9 billion.