The scope of the agreement includes financial and technical support for pilot demonstration and commercial scale-up activities, which may include joint development of large-scale demonstration projects that would capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from power station flue gas.
The captured CO2 would be sent for secure, long-term storage deep underground. Use of ECO2 for large scale capture and storage of CO2 from power plants represents a major option for reducing greenhouse gases, the companies said in a press release.
The ECO2 process is a post-combustion CO2 capture process for conventional power plants. The technology is suitable for retrofit to the existing coal-fired, electric generating fleet, as well as for new coal-fired plants.
Jonathan Forsyth, CO2 capture team leader at BP Alternative Energy, said: This is an opportunity for BP to broaden the scope of our low carbon power offering by including a CO2 capture technology that is compatible with new and existing coal fired power stations. The priority in our collaboration with Powerspan is to successfully demonstrate the technology and advance it to full-scale commercial deployment as rapidly as possible.
Pilot scale testing of ECO2 technology is expected to begin at FirstEnergy’s Burger plant in Shadyside, Ohio, US in early 2008. The ECO2 pilot unit will process a 1MW slipstream (20 tons of CO2 per day) from the 50MW Burger ECO unit. The plan is to provide the captured CO2 for sequestration on-site in an 8,000-foot test well drilled at the Burger plant earlier this year.
