Carbon News

Monday 02 March 2009

The Aberthaw power station near Barry has recently seen completion of its new flue gas desulphurisation plant, and is now to host a 3MW carbon capture trial

RWE npower has said it is now planning to treble the size of its carbon capture and storage pilot project at Aberthaw Power Station, South Wales.

The company said the £8.4 million project will see a planning application submitted soon, with hopes of construction getting under way at the site near Barry later this year.

The first pilot facility in the UK to capture carbon dioxide direct from a commercially operating power station, npower said it now intends the project to use a 3MW generating unit.

RWE had intended the first phase of the Aberthaw CCS project to be 1MW in scale, before a 25MW second phase.

The project will investigate post-combustion technology that npower said could be applied to existing coal power plants.

Dr Kevin Akhurst, managing director for generation at npower, said: "Although CCS is currently unproven at the level needed for full scale power generation, this project gives us the opportunity both to develop a large scale pilot plant and also to research further the current barriers to potential success."

Technology

Npower has already completed commissioning of a test facility at its Didcot power station in Oxfordshire, where research into both post-combustion and oxyfuel CCS technologies can be carried out.

Post-combustion technology involves carbon dioxide being scrubbed from emissions, for example by spraying sodium hydroxide through the gases arising from the combustion of coal. The oxyfuel process involves coal being burned in oxygen, rather than air, which produces emissions that can be up to 95% pure carbon dioxide, that is then stored.

In its native Germany, npower's parent RWE is aiming to build its first large-scale CCS facility at Huerth, to come onstream in 2014. The £1.8 billion plant would have an electrical output of around 450MW, using coal gasification technology complete with a pipeline and storage facility. RWE would provide about half of the funding itself with hopes of state or European funding assistance.

In the UK, npower is part of a consortium seeking to build a government-funded 300-400MW post-combustion CCS coal plant (see this New Energy Focus story).

Dr Akhurst said: "Whilst continuing to meet growing energy demand, RWE is committed to a strategy of reducing its carbon intensity in the UK by a third from 2000 to 2015. We will achieve this through moving to lower CO₂ forms of power generation like renewables, gas and combined heat and power. Carbon Capture represents another important part of this jigsaw."

January saw work completed on a £235m flue gas desulphurisation unit at the 1.4GW Aberthaw power plant, which was needed for the plant to meet emissions controls within Europe's Large Combustion Plant Directive.