The integration of carbon capture and storage with combined cycle technology is attracting increasing attention, not least in the UK and the USA

NZT

Visualisation of the NZT Power CCGT+CCUS plant

In the UK, the Net Zero Teesside Power (NZT Power) project – a joint venture between bp and Equinor, with bp leading as operator – has the potential to become one of the world’s first integrated combined cycle technology (CCGT)+ carbon capture and storage (CCUS) facilities.

It is “expected to provide flexible, dispatchable low ‎carbon electricity to complement the growing deployment of intermittent forms of renewable ‎energy such as wind and solar.”

In mid-December, the project’s developers awarded FEED (front end engineering design) contracts to two separate consortia of engineering companies, ‎carbon capture technology providers, and EPC contractors, the idea being to instigate a competition between the two consortia.‎

The two selected contractor groups are:

  • Technip Energies and General Electric consortium: led by Technip Energies and ‎including Shell as a subcontractor for the provision of its Cansolv CO2 capture ‎technology and Balfour Beatty as the nominated construction partner.‎
  • Aker Solutions, Doosan Babcock and Siemens Energy consortium: led by Aker Solutions ‎and including Aker Carbon Capture as a subcontractor for the provision of its ‎CO2 capture technology.‎

The idea is that the two consortia will now work on design and development plans for NZT Power’s proposed “up to 860 MW” combined cycle ‎power station with carbon capture plant and each deliver a “comprehensive” FEED package, “led from their UK ‎offices”, within 12 months.

Following the completion of the FEED process, the two ‎consortia will “then submit EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) proposals for ‎the execution phase.” Then “as part of the final investment decision expected in 2023, a single ‎consortium will be selected to take the project forward into construction.”

The awards are said to “represent an important next step towards the proposed development of the UK’s ‎first full-scale integrated power and carbon capture project.”

The contracts also include FEED for the planned facilities that will gather and compress ‎CO2 from NZT Power and other regional sources and export it offshore for permanent sub-‎surface storage. These facilities will also take CO2 captured from a range ‎of projects in the Humber region.

This common infrastructure for carbon dioxide transport and disposal in the Endurance aquifer in the southern North Sea is to be provided by an entity called the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP), a joint venture between bp (leading as operator), Equinor, National Grid Ventures, Shell and ‎TotalEnergies.

The proposed NZT Power facility is in the Teesside part of the NEP-led East Coast Cluster (which encompasses both the Teesside and Humber regions). In October 2021, the East Coast Cluster was named as one of the first two clusters to be taken forward as part of the UK government’s carbon capture ‎and storage “cluster sequencing process” (the other being the HyNet Cluster in the northwest of England).

In January 2022, NZT Power submitted a bid into Phase-2 of the cluster sequencing process, with the UK government expected to announce a shortlist of successful projects around May 2022. If successful, NZT Power would be “eligible for government business model support and further investment will be unlocked.”

NZT Power has also entered into a partnership with Durham-based NOF, a UK “national energy sector business development organisation”, to support the project “on supply chain engagement.”

A DCO (Development Consent Order) application for the NZT Power project was submitted to the UK Planning Inspectorate in 2021. It was formerly the Clean Gas Project, initiated by the now defunct UK Energy Technologies Institute, and subsequently passed to OGCI Climate Investments and then to the current development partnership.

US DoE awards

Carbon capture from natural gas-fuelled combined cycle plants was a predominant theme of a recent group of awards announced by the US Department of Energy for 12 projects (totalling $45 million) to “advance point-source carbon capture and storage technologies that can capture at least 95% of carbon dioxide.” Eight of the 12 projects are addressing carbon capture at natural gas-fuelled combined cycle plants.

Among these eight is a GE-led FEED study focused on GE 7F.04 based combined cycle plants operating at Southern Company subsidiary Alabama Power’s James M. Barry power plant. The Barry site has two 2-on-1 combined cycle plants in operation, each equipped with two 7F.04 gas turbines plus a steam turbine.

The Plant Barry site hosts a range of power plants.

The GE-led Barry FEED study, “Retrofittable advanced combined cycle integration for flexible decarbonized generation”, will receive $5 771 670 in federal funding following successful completion of the award negotiation phase. The funding has a goal of supporting commercial deployment by 2030.

GE Gas Power will work with Southern Company, Linde, BASF, and Kiewit to develop a detailed plan for integrating carbon capture with natural gas fuelled combined cycle technology.

GE will research advanced technology and control concepts to integrate combined cycle technology with Linde’s Gen 2 carbon capture solution, which is based on BASF OASE blue technology. The project will also include gas and steam turbine equipment enhancements to improve the carbon capture process, with a goal of reducing the impact of the carbon capture process on the power plant’s output, performance, and equipment cost.

The retrofittable capture technology will be applicable to other power plant sites and serve as a template for lowering carbon emissions across more than 1500 F-class gas turbines worldwide, says GE.

“To develop a sustainable and viable carbon capture solution integrated into the existing power plant, we will go beyond the scope of the study to consider the economics and the performance of the plant holistically,” said John Catillaz, director of decarbonisation marketing, GE Gas Power, “including a plan for the transportation and storage of the captured carbon dioxide emissions.”

GE and Linde signed an agreement in December 2021 to strengthen their existing co-operation with a specific focus on exploring carbon capture and storage opportunities in North America by leveraging GE’s expertise in power generation technology and plant integration with Linde’s experience with post combustion amine-based carbon capture processes. GE said this agreement will also provide new opportunities for North American operators of their gas turbines to pursue the adoption of CCUS technologies.

“OASE Blue was developed specifically for large-scale post-combustion capture technology”, said Todd Spengeman, business director – standard amines & OASE gas treating excellence, offering “low energy consumption and exceptionally flexible operating range.”

The other seven combined cycle carbon capture projects supported under US DoE’s recent awards for point source CCUS research & development were:

Deer Park Energy Center NGCC carbon capture system FEED study – The Calpine Texas CCUS Holdings, LLC project team will conduct a FEED study on a modular, commercial-scale, 5 million tonnes net CO2 per year, second-generation CCS system, capturing 95% of total CO2 emissions from an NGCC power plant at Calpine’s Deer Park carbon capture facility. The project will use Shell’s Cansolv capture technology.

FEED for a CO2 capture system at Calpine’s Delta Energy Center – ION Clean Energy plans to perform a FEED study for a CCS system to be retrofitted onto Calpine’s Delta Energy Center (DEC), an existing 857 MW NGCC power plant located in Pittsburg, California. This will utilise ION’s ICE-21 solvent and will take full advantage of the solvent benefits, which include a smaller physical plant, reduced energy requirements, less solvent degradation, lower emissions and lower capital costs relative to systems built with commercial benchmark solvents. The team will work to capture 95% of DEC’s CO2 emissions for geologic storage in the nearby Sacramento Basin.

Plastic additive, sorbent-coated, thermally-integrated contactor for CO2 capture (PLASTIC4CO2) – A project team led by GE will develop a design for a plastic additive contactor for NGCC flue gas. The team’s key objective is to demonstrate an integrated system of plastic additive contactor and metal/covalent organic framework sorbents to capture 95% of CO2 from flue gas at a technology readiness level of 3.

Highly efficient regeneration module for carbon capture systems in NGCC applications – SRI International aims to design, fabricate and test a highly efficient regeneration module capable of providing an ultra-lean absorption solution that is required for capturing CO2 from dilute sources at 95% or better efficiency. By integrating this advanced regenerator module with SRI’s Mixed Salt Process absorption modules, SRI expects to demonstrate significant progress toward a 20% reduction in cost of capture versus a reference NGCC plant with carbon capture.

Bench-scale test of a PEI-monolith CO2 capture process for NGCC point sources – The CORMETECH, Inc project team plans to further develop, optimise and bench-scale test a novel, lower cost integrated process technology for point source capture of CO2 from NGCC plant flue gas. The novel process flows NGCC flue gas over a monolithic amine contactor to capture the CO2, followed by steam-mediated thermal desorption and CO2 collection. This process occurs in a multi-bed cyclic process unit, but without the need for vacuum, which enhances scalability to large NGCC plants.

A new thermal swing adsorption process for post-combustion carbon capture from natural gas plants – TDA Research, Inc and its project partners aim to fabricate and test a transformational post combustion capture process. TDA will work closely with one of its partners, Membrane Technology Research (MTR), to fabricate the engineered sorbent structures and make modules. MTR will fabricate the sorbent sheets/laminates at 1 ft x 1 ft size, which will then be integrated with a microwave heater. The resulting module will be evaluated at TDA using simulated NGCC flue gas. These tests seek to demonstrate rapid cycling of the module between adsorption and desorption conditions targeting full cycle times less than 30 minutes while meeting DOE targets (95% capture with 95% CO2 purity).

Dual-loop solution-based CCS for net negative CO2 emissions with lower cost – A project team led by the University of Kentucky Research Foundation plans to address technical challenges arising from the low CO2(~4 vol%) and high oxygen (~12 vol%) concentrations in NGCC flue gas by employing a dual-loop solution process to lower the capital cost by 50% and offset the operating cost with negative CO2 emissions and hydrogen production.

This article first appeared in Modern Power Systems magazine.