Demonstration Set for Carbon Capture on Commercial Scale
Commercial scale carbon-dioxide capture is the goal of a demonstration project planned for a Texas coal-fired powerplant. In a quarterly report, its owner calls it one of “the largest carbon-capture and sequestration projects in the world” and says it “may be the first to achieve commercial scale from an existing coal-fueled powerplant.”
NRG Energy Inc., Princeton, N.J., and Powerspan Corp., Portsmouth, N.H., have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly design, construct and operate a demonstration of Powerspan’s ECO2 technology at NRG’s W.A. Parish powerplant, Thompsons, Texas. The project, whose cost NRG officials have estimated between $150 million and $200 million, will be designed to capture 90% of the carbon dioxide from flue gas equal in quantity to that from a 125-MW unit. Four of Parish’s units, totaling 2,455 MW, are coal-fueled. The other four, totaling 1,190 MW, use natural gas. NRG officials say the captured CO2 will be used in enhanced oil-recovery operations in the Houston area.