JouleBlog

Source: Alstom

American Electric Power and Alstom formally commissioned its Mountaineer Plant on Friday, the world’s first coal-fired power plant to capture and store carbon dioxide. The Mountaineer CSS demonstration project began capturing carbon dioxide Sept. 1 and began storing it Oct. 2. It’s designed to capture 100,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III and U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) attended the event.

AEP’s 1,300-megawatt Mountaineer electric generation plant was retrofitted earlier this year with Alstom’s patented chilled ammonia carbon dioxide capture technology that captures the plant’s exhaust flue gas. The exhaust gas is chilled and combined with a solution of ammonium carbonate, which absorbs the carbon dioxide to create ammonium bicarbonate. The ammonium bicarbonate solution is then pressurized and heated in a separate process to produce a high-purity stream of carbon dioxide.  The carbon dioxide will be compressed and piped for storage into deep geologic formations, roughly 1.5 miles beneath the plant surface. Approximately 90 percent of the CO2 will be captured and permanently stored.

AEP has applied for federal stimulus funding to scale up the Alstom 20 megawatt-electric (MWe) chilled ammonia technology demonstration plant to 235 MWe. The proposed commercial-scale demonstration will capture and geologically store approximately 1.5 million metric tonnes of CO2 per year. Alstom says it will make carbon capture and sequestration technology commercially available by 2015.

In October U.S Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced $55 million to develop advanced technologies that can capture carbon dioxide from flue gases at existing power plants. A few days before that announcement, on October 12, Secretary Chu issued a “call to action” to Energy Ministers and other attendees of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum in London. Noting that coal accounts for 25% of the world’s energy supply and 40% of carbon emissions, Secretary Chu acknowledged that coal would be a major and growing energy source now and in the future. “For this reason, I believe we must make it our goal to advance carbon capture and storage technology to the point where widespread, affordable deployment can begin in 8 to 10 years,” he said.

Is he right? The question of where federal funds should be directed will be sure to heat up as Congress begins to tackle to climate bill, and is sure to be a hot-button issue in cash-strapped states (Like West Virginia) whose economies are strongly tied to the coal industry. Still, I would like to see more funds directed to wind and solar power as well as the infrastructure to carry the power to its end-use markets. I think its money that needs to be spent now if this country is to upgrade its energy supply in the future, and it’s the only way, really, to break away from coal as an energy source to a significant degree.

What’s your take?