Babcock Power has formed a new joint venture company to commercialise its zero-emissions power plant design and says that development of the technology is making progress.
The US firm and its partner, ThermoEnergy Corporation, have created a limited liability company called Babcock-Thermo Carbon Capture LLC to develop and commercialise an advanced clean coal and carbon capture power plant. The two companies initially joined forces in April 2008 and are now formalising their plans in order to start the development of subsystems and designs for a proposed pilot plant.
The plant design is based on ThermoEnergy Integrated Power Systems (TIPS) technology, which incorporates high pressure oxy-fuel chemistry and carbon capture technology to enable the combustion of carbonaceous fuels with near zero emissions. The two companies say that they expect TIPS to have an economic and environmental advantage over other carbon capture technologies.
“The progression of the TIPS technology coincides well with the timeline of anticipated forthcoming CO2 legislation,” stated James F. Wood, President and CEO of Babcock Power Inc. “As we evolve TIPS into a commercial scale product utilizing pilot plant results, Babcock-Thermo Carbon Capture LLC will be well positioned to compete in the multi-billion dollar CO2 capture market.”
“Planned TIPS industrial heat and power plants represent an ideal solution for many US infrastructure industries,” said Dennis Cossey, Chairman and CEO of ThermoEnergy. “The carbon credit offsets associated with greatly reducing greenhouse gas emissions could eventually provide a substantial source of income should Congress enact some form of carbon tax in the coming months.”
The TIPS design incorporates relative few unit operations to maximise reliability and recovers latent heat of vaporisation to enhance boost process efficiency. It captures CO2 in a pipeline-quality, liquid form.