Aiming at bringing down the barriers to the commercial deployment of post-combustion capture (PCC) of CO2, an Australian team from CSIRO Energy Technology (Newcastle, New South Wales; www.csiro.au), CSIRO Energy Technology (Clayton South, Victoria), and several other research organizations has developed an integrated PCC R&D and pilot plant program. The program includes four pilot plants:
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The Latrobe Valley PCC pilot plant at the Loy Yang power station in Victoria started operating in March 2008. It is based on amines as the CO2 solvent. It will be tested on flue gases from Victorian brown coal. The capture plant capacities range from 100 to 500 kg/h of CO2
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The second pilot plant, based at Delta Electricity’s Lake Munmorah black-coal-fired power station in NSW, is undergoing commissioning. The plant is based on aqueous ammonia for CO2 capture
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A third plant, to be located at the Tarong power station in Queensland will focus on the determination of an optimum solvent for flue gases. The plant will be constructed in the first half of 2009 and will be ready for operation in the second half of 2009
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CSIRO has also partnered with the Xi’an Thermal Power Research Institute and China HuaNeng Group for the development and operation of an amine based pilot plant at the HuaNeng Beijing Cogeneration Power Plant. This power station has fluegas desulfurization (FGD) and deNOx. (The Australian power plants do not have FGD and deNOx.) The Chinese plant will help CSIRO understand the tradeoffs between an integrated pollution control system and separate control technologies for each pollutant. It has been operating since June
PCC science leader Paul Feron, of CSIRO Energy Technology, says further development of the capture technology and the power plant technology can lead to power-plant-generation efficiencies with 90% CO2 capture, which are equivalent to the current efficiencies without CO2 capture (For more on CO2 capture, see CE, December 2008, pp. 16 – 20).