On behalf of Governor Edward Rendell, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Secretary, John Hanger has granted a $1m to help finance a project testing new technology designed to capture a minimum of 95% of the carbon dioxide from a coal-fired test plant at Consol Energy's Research and Development Division south of Pittsburgh.
The technology is expected to enable world economies to reduce CO2 emissions, while meeting energy needs necessary for economic growth.
The test project combines Pressurized Fluidized Bed Combined Cycle (PFBC) technology with carbon dioxide separation technology developed by Sargas. The PFBC technology is designed to reduce emissions by as much as 95%, virtually eliminating sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and particulate emissions. The addition of the Sargas technology will reduce CO2 emissions, which will likely be the next phase of required emission reductions for power generation.
Doug Farnham, president of PFBC, said: “Our goal is to bring on line the world’s cleanest power plant – right here near Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania has always been an energy leader, and with this new technology, we’re working to address tomorrow’s challenges as well. We’re grateful to the state for its support to help us make this a reality.”
When deployed in a full-scale 400MW commercial plant, PFBC and Sargas’s project is expected to generate approximately 2,98 billion kilowatt hours per year of electricity – enough to power approximately 270,000 homes, while saving 651,437 tons of coal per year.
The first phase of the project focuses on capturing carbon dioxide. Some of the captured carbon could be inserted and stored in deep geological strata, or used for oil recovery by inserting it into existing wells, forcing more oil to the surface.
However, the next phase of this project will seek to demonstrate a power plant with a negative carbon footprint. Carbon dioxide captured using the Sargas unit will be fed to an algae photobioreactor. Algae need carbon dioxide to grow. The system can produce algae for pharmaceuticals, food, bio-plastics, biofuels and, at the end of the algae life cycle, even fertilizers.
This is a new approach for carbon sequestration. The CO2 captured by the PFBC/Sargas system can be used to create soil amendments that power generators can sell (thus offsetting the cost of carbon capture technology) or that farmers could use (giving them a way to participate in and benefit from any CO2 cap-and-trade system developed by regulators). Moreover, converting atmospheric carbon into terrestrial carbon converts it to its stable form, where it can be sequestered for thousands of years.