BASF, RWE Power and the Linde Group to Develop New CO2 Capture Process

BASF, RWE Power and the Linde Group agreed recently to develop a new processes for CO2 capture from combustion gases in coal-fired power plants. The collaboration will comprises the construction and operation of a pilot facility at the lignite-fired power plant of RWE Power AG in Niederaussem/Germany to test new developments and solvents from BASF for the capture of CO2 – so-called CO2 scrubbing. Linde is responsible for the engineering and the construction of the pilot facility.

“There is agreement among experts,” says Dr. Johannes Lambertz, Board member of RWE Power, “that coal will continue to be an important pillar in the global energy supply for decades to come. This is why we have set up a long-range CO2 avoidance strategy: we are building the most efficient coal-fired power plants in the world, and we are developing a new generation of power plants for tomorrow, with an efficiency of over 50 percent. We are already designing all our modern coal-fired power plants so that they can eventually be equipped with the CO2 capture technology that is currently being developed with BASF and Linde. The aim must be to set up not only highly modern plants from 2020, but also virtually carbon-neutral coal-fired power plants including storage.”

In late 2005 BASF announced that it had developed a novel amine-based solvent that is particularly efficient in removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from power plant emissions.

CO2 is removed from power plant emissions by means of chemical solvents which bind the CO2 in the first step. Then, when they are reconditioned, they release this CO2 before they are fed back to the process. To prevent the CO2 from escaping to the atmosphere, it is condensed and stored – for example in water-bearing strata of rock (aquifers), in mines or old oil and gas deposits. However, conventional solvents are easily degenerated by the oxygen contained in the power-plant waste gas, and the process also requires major input of energy to achieve the absorption, release and storage of CO2. Laboratory tests have shown the novel amine-based solvent from BASF to be much more stable than conventional solvents, which means that it can be used longer. It also consumes less energy in the process of absorbing and releasing CO2. A gas scrubbing process based on the new solvent can therefore substantially reduce the cost of CO2 removal.

RWE and BASF have been involved in the CASTOR project since early 2004, a research project that is sponsored by the European Union (EU) and which seeks to find methods to remove CO2 from combustion gases and to store it.

On 15 March 2006, the CASTOR CO2-capture industrial pilot unit was inaugurated at the Esbjerg power plant (Denmark), operated by Elsam where the amine-based solvent is being tested. It is the largest installation in the world that captures CO2 in the flue gases of a coal-fired power station.

The purpose of the new RWE pilot facility is the long-term testing of new solvents with a view to gaining an understanding of processes and plant engineering to improve CO2 capture technology. The goal is to apply CO2 capture commercially in lignite-fired power plants by 2020. The new technology should enable the removal of more than 90 percent of CO2 from the combustion gas of a power plant and then subsequently to store this gas underground.

Once the pilot tests are successfully completed, they will decide on a subsequent demonstration plant in 2010. This will be designed to provide a reliable basis for the commercialization of the new process. RWE Power has earmarked a budget of approximately €80 million for the development project, including the construction and operation of the pilot facility and demonstration plant.

This development is in competition with the ECO2 technology using an ammonia-based solution that Powerspan is developing as described in this previous post. Pilot scale testing of ECO2 technology is expected to begin at the Burger plant in early 2008. The ECO2 pilot unit will process a 1-megawatt (MW) slipstream (20 tons of CO2/day) from the 50-MW Burger ECO unit. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) studies indicate that the ammonia-based CO2 capture process could provide significant savings compared to commercially available amine-based CO2 capture technologies.

I presume that the amine-based technologies that DOE studied were not using the solvent developed by BASF or the process configuration was different.  In any event it is always good to see competition in technology.  One thing I don't understand is why we will have to wait until 2020 for the commercializtion of the BASF/RWE process.

Comments

[bigTom]

Until there is a sufficiently large cost (carbon tax or whatever) for CO2 emmisions nothing like this will be commercial. The amine process supposedly requires a significant amount of energy, reducing the output/efficiency of the power plant significantly. Perhaps this method will be considerably more economic.

2020 is only 13years away. Utilities probably want to see cost and reliability data before commiting. That will presumably take a few years. Then they may want to see data on a more realistic scale of capture
(not 20tons/day but thousands).

It is interesting that they are now designing plants that can be retrofitted. That is not happening in the important US, India or Chinese markets.

[Kit P]

They are designing plants in the US for CCS. AEP is one that has been discussed here. There are also several others. For those who are not paying attention, the coal industry has overcome every environmental challenge to staying in business even though the bar of environmental impact keeps keeting lower and lower.

By 2020, AGW will be revealed as the hoax that it really is. The doomsayers will blathering about the next age or whatever. These things come in cycles

[Paul Dietz]

By 2020, AGW will be revealed as the hoax that it really is.

By 2020, the denialists (at least the sane and honest ones, if any) will realize just how stupid they had been.

[Jim Holm]

Somewhere along the way Coal Yard Nukes will have to be factored into the equation.

[jlw]

Do the denialists also deny seawater acidification due to absorbed CO2? That's an example of high school chemistry--carbonic acid eroding calcium-rich shells--and will have a large detremental effect on ocean life by mid-century no matter what the temperature is, assuming we continue to add CO2 to the atmosphere.

[greg]

There is an excellent way of capturing CO2. It's actually been around for quite a while. TREES!
It's a good idea to clean up coal plants, or better yet replace them with clean solar power, more should be done (worldwide) to recover the lost forests. The CO2 contained in those lost forests went into the atmosfere! In Alaska and other cold places, the trees are just falling down and dying because the permafrost that holds up the trees is melting, together with the Mammoth dung.
Trees may be more important to our climate (and water cycle) than you think.

[Kit P]

jlw, could you explain the fugacity of CO2 in seawater? We are way past high school chemistry!! Please link it to what you mean by 'large detremental' so you do not sound like one of doom sayers. Oh what, you are just repeating something some journalist wrote and neither of you have a clue?

[JohnBo]

Hi Greg,
Trees do not grow in permafrost. I thought you should know. Maybe there are a few landslides from melting permafrost slopes? If the temperature and CO2 in Alaska increase there will be a lot more trees there. JohnBo

[greg]

Sorry to correct you.
www.cbc.ca/health/story/2005/12/28/permafrost051228

[bigTom]

Kitp, Greg:
Seawater does absorb some amount of CO2, where it is called carbonic acid. The ocean is slightly basic. As more CO2 is absorbed by the ocean it becomes less basic. It is technically correct to say ocean acidification, as what is happening is we are neutralizing the basic nature of the seawater. Of course there is still a valid concern about the effect of this change on abundant microscopic lifeforms, such as diatoms. Small scale experiments suggest organisms they can adapt. Now what effect it will have on a large-scale ecosystem might be a different matter.

Trees do grow over permafrost. In a permafrost region with warmish summers the top layer of soil melts in the summer, and refreezes in the winter. But below that layer the ground is frozen for many tens or hundreds of meters. If say the top meter undergoes the annual freeze-thaw, then tree roots can only occupy that top meter. As warming causes the permafrost to melt, volumes that were largely ice, called ice lenses, can melt leaving voids. Trees can topple, and roads can develop sinkholes.

At the lattitude of Fairbanks full sized Spruce and Aspen grow on permafrost ground. Further North (or higher up) you get dwarf willow, then tundra vegetation.

[greg]

Try again
www.cbc.ca/health/story/2005/12/28/
permafrost051228.html

[jlw]

Kit P:

Does the Royal Society meet your oh-so-high standards? Then you might want to check this out:

http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/document.asp?id=3249

Or how about the journal Nature? How does that comapre to your daily diet of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity?

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7059/abs/nature04095.html

To quote the abstract of the Nature paper, "Our findings indicate that conditions detrimental to high-latitude ecosystems could develop within decades, not centuries as suggested previously."

Really, Engineer-Poet had your number down cold.

[Kit P]

bigTom, if you want to know more aboutCO2 in seawater ; go to the NOAA web site and search for fugacity. The answer that bigTom provided was very simplistic.

Royal Society press release does not meet any standard for scientific journalism. Most likely because the journalist who wrote it. You would at least think they could properly explain pH. If jlw would read what he links and think about it a little bit, he would conclude that the magnitude of the pH is very small compared to the natural variation.

The same with the climate around Greenland. Why do you think the Vikings called it 'greenland' when they started passing farming it about a thousand years ago?

[Christopher]

Kit P, not sure what you mean about Greenland, but the only info about it's name I've read says it was named by Erik the Red to try to attract people to it, though the southern part had some green areas. [ http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/17946 ]

[Paul Dietz]

The same with the climate around Greenland. Why do you think the Vikings called it 'greenland' when they started passing farming it about a thousand years ago?

It was a PR name to encourage settlers to go there.

[Made in China]

Made in China

[Mcafee serial]

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