Hydrogen Energy, a joint venture of BP and Rio Tinto, has plans to construct a USD 2 billion hydrogen-fired CCS power plant in Abu Dhabi. The captured carbon dioxide would be transported and stored. Gas turbines fuelled by the hydrogen will generate around 420 MW of low-carbon electricity, 5% of Abu Dhabi’s existing generating capacity. The heart of the plant will be a natural gas reformer and carbon capture facility where 100 million cubic feet of natural gas per day would be reformed into hydrogen and CO2.
The CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) system would capture 90 % of the CO2 generated and permanently store up to 1.7 million tonnes of CO2 a year.
The plant will form part of Abu Dhabi’s $15 billion Masdar initiative, which was launched in April 2006 to establish the emirate as a hub for alternative energy resources and sustainable technologies at a time of rising concerns over global warming fuelled by increased consumption of hydrocarbons.
Hydrogen Energy and its local partner, Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co, or Adfec, the government-run entity implementing the Masdar initiative, plan to inject the captured CO2 into domestic oil fields, boosting crude oil production while at the same time keeping it stored underground. The CO2 would replace the natural gas that is presently being injected into local oil fields, freeing up the resource for use in industries and power plants.
Work on the project’s $45 million early engineering contract is already under way by Foster Wheeler, with scheduled completion due for the end of this year. Construction on the plant will start in early 2009.
Although BP’s plans for a gasification/CCS plant at Peterhead in the UK were abandoned last year, the company has recently announced plans for a commercial hydrogen power plant at Carson in southern California, while in May last year BP and Rio Tinto announced that they were beginning feasibility studies on plans for the potential development of a A$2 billion (US$1.5 billion) gasified coal power generation project at Kwinana in Western Australia that would be fully integrated with carbon capture and storage using deep geological formations locally.