Secretary Chu Announces up to $154 Million for NRG Energy CCS Project
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds keep flowing from Washington. On Tuesday, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced that a project with NRG Energy has been selected to receive up to $154 million, including funding from ARRA. Located in Thompsons, Texas, the post-combustion capture and sequestration project will demonstrate advanced technology to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. It will also assist with enhanced oil recovery efforts from a nearby oil field.
The NRG Energy project was selected under the third round of the Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI), a cost-shared collaboration between the federal government and private industry to demonstrate low-emission carbon capture and storage technologies in advanced coal-based, power generation. The goal of CCPI is to accelerate the readiness of advanced coal technologies for commercial deployment, ensuring that the United States has clean, reliable, and affordable electricity and power.
NRG will construct a 60-MW carbon capture demonstration facility at the company’s W.A. Parish Unit 7 in Thompsons, Texas. The six-year project will demonstrate an innovative integration of several important advances in carbon capture and sequestration technologies, including these:
- Fluor’s advanced Econamine FG Plus carbon capture process, using several different novel amine solvents. (See this Aug. 2009 POWER story for a description of the process.)
- Ramgen’s advanced carbon dioxide compression system. (See this June 2009 POWER story covering the technology.)
- The integration of highly efficient co-generation to provide the necessary steam and electricity.
- Enhanced oil recovery sequestration in one of the Texas Gulf Coast oilfields near the Parish plant.
Scheduled to begin operating in 2013, NRG’s carbon capture demonstration project at WA Parish will process flue gas from the plant equal in quantity to that of a 60-MW unit. It will be designed to capture 90% of incoming CO2, or approximately 400,000 metric tons of CO2 annually.
The project is expected to show that post-combustion carbon capture applied to existing plants can be done economically, especially when the plant has the opportunity to sequester carbon dioxide in nearby oilfields.
The DOE will provide up to $154 million in federal funds, which will be matched by NRG Energy.
Source: DOE, NRG Energy