An independent review of Powerspan’s ECO2 carbon capture technology says that the company’s current pilot project will provide a sound basis for the design and construction of a commercial-scale system.
The review, carried out by WorleyParsons, involved a detailed assessment of the technology and Powerspan’s ECO2 pilot test facility at the R. E. Burger power plant in Ohio. It concludes that the pilot facility is well designed and instrumented and is producing reliable data that could be used design, build and predict the performance of a larger, commercial-scale plant.
The 1 MW equivalent slipstream ECO2 pilot test facility is capturing around 20 t/day of CO2 at First Energy Generation’s R. E. Burger plant. Using design information based on the pilot results, the report concludes that a retrofit project could be implemented at less than $40 per ton of CO2 captured and compressed for a project size of 220 MWe net.
The WorleyParsons cost estimate is based on data derived from the ECO2 pilot for 90 per cent CO2 capture with steam extraction for regeneration of less than 1000 Btu/lb of CO2. This energy requirement is an improvement over previously reported values and results from optimization of the pilot facility process, says Powerspan.
Powerspan’s ECO2 technology is a post-combustion CO2 capture process that uses a proprietary solvent to capture 90 per cent of CO2 from the flue gas of coal fired power plants. Powerspan says it will make the results of the WorleyParsons assessment available to prospective customers.