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2 November 2007 -- NRG Energy, Inc. and Powerspan Corp. plan to demonstrate at commercial scale a technology for carbon dioxide capture from conventional coal-fueled, electric power plants. Powerspan's ECO2 technology is a post-combustion, regenerative process that uses an ammonia-based solution to capture CO2 from the flue gas and release it in a form that is ready for transportation and permanent geological storage.
This carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) demonstration, which will be conducted at NRG's WA Parish plant near Sugar Land, Texas, on flue gas equal in quantity to that from a 125 MW unit, is expected to capture and sequester about one million tons of CO2 annually.
Once captured, the CO2 is expected to be used in enhanced oilfield recovery operations in the Houston area. Powerspan's ECO2 demonstration facility will be designed to capture 90 percent of incoming CO2 and is expected to be operational in 2012.
The ECO2 process is a post-combustion CO2 capture process for conventional power plants that is differentiated from other approaches by what a news release said is its "simpler capital equipment design" and "significantly lower energy consumption." The technology reportedly is suitable for retrofit to the existing coal-fueled, electric generating fleet as well as for new coal-fueled plants.
Under a cooperative research and development agreement announced in May 2004, Powerspan is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory on developing the CO2 removal process for coal-fueled power plants. A news release said the CO2 capture takes place after the NOX, SO2, mercury and fine particulate matter are captured. Once the CO2 is captured, the ammonia-based solution is regenerated to release CO2 and ammonia. The ammonia is recovered and sent back to the scrubbing process and the CO2 is in a form that is ready for geological storage. Ammonia is not consumed in the scrubbing process and no separate by-product is created. The process can be applied to both existing and new coal-fueled power plants and is particularly advantageous for sites where ammonia-based scrubbing of power plant emissions is used.
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