Oct. 8, 2009 (PR Newswire) --
PLEASANT PRAIRIE, Wis., Oct. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- We Energies, Alstom and The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) announced today that a pilot project testing an advanced chilled ammonia process has demonstrated more than 90 percent capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the flue stream of at a coal-fueled power plant in Wisconsin.
At a press conference at We Energies' Pleasant Prairie Power Plant, which hosted the project, We Energies Chairman, President and CEO Gale Klappa, Alstom U.S. President Pierre Gauthier, and EPRI Senior Vice President Hank Courtright discussed the demonstration of Alstom's patented chilled ammonia process for carbon capture. Testing at the pilot facility, using a 1.7-megawatt (electric) slipstream from the plant, began in early 2008 and will conclude later this year.
The project confirmed the predicted performance of the chilled ammonia carbon capture system at an operating power plant. It achieved key research metrics around hours of operation, ammonia release, CO2 removal levels, and CO2 purity. In doing so, the project demonstrated the fundamental viability of the carbon capture technology in real-world conditions such as changes in temperature and humidity, the inevitable starts and stops of a large power plant, and the environmental hurdles that go along with using any chemical process.
"One of the biggest challenges facing our industry is the development of cost effective technology that will allow us to capture carbon from the operation of power plants around the world," said Klappa. "Today, with the success we're reporting from the research here at Pleasant Prairie, the solution is one step closer to reality."
Lessons learned at Pleasant Prairie already have provided critical information for efforts to scale up effective carbon capture and storage technologies for new power plants and for retrofit to existing plants. A scaled-up 20-megawatt (electric) capture system has been installed at AEP's 1,300-megawatt Mountaineer Plant, where it will remove an estimated 90% of carbon dioxide emissions from the flue gas stream it processes, capturing up to 100,000 metric tons of CO2 per year.
The captured CO2 will be compressed, pipelined, and injected into two different saline reservoirs located approximately 8,000 feet beneath the plant site. Battelle Memorial Institute will serve as the consultant for AEP on geological storage as an extensive monitoring system will be used to track the extent of the sequestered CO2 over time.
"This project has been a success. It proved what we needed to know to stay on schedule to commercialize carbon capture technology for new and existing power plants by 2015, a necessary step to meet ambitious climate change targets being proposed by policy makers in the U.S.
