Category: Carbon management

Carbon emissions continue to rise, ratcheting up temperatures and driving increasingly extreme weather events worldwide. Therefore, carbon capture and management will be a crucial step in curbing climate change.

There are two main categories of carbon emissions: point-source and nonpoint-source. Point-source emissions come from a single source such as a power plant or a factory. Nonpoint-source emissions are harder to pinpoint and to address because they cover a widespread area and can come from a variety of sources like automobiles, airplanes, boats, and more.

“In order to offer a more robust solution to carbon management, you have to be able to address both point-source emissions and nonpoint-source emissions,” said Kevin OBrien, director of the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC).

The U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE-NETL) has partnered with ISTC in a nearly $2.5 million project to develop preliminary designs and determine feasibility for the first commercial-scale direct air capture and storage system (DAC+S) for CO₂ removal in the United States.

This 18-month project will explore the possibility of pulling 100,000 tonnes of CO₂ from the air annually. Project principal investigator OBrien believes this amount will help offset steep upfront costs and make the service profitable, at least at a commercial scale.

“The potential impact this could have would be immense, because now you can address unavoidable nonpoint sources by pulling CO₂ out of the air, hopefully in any type of climate anywhere around the world,” said OBrien.

The project will use DAC technology provided by the Swiss company Climeworks. Climeworks has built and operated several DAC plants in various climates across Europe, among them the world’s first industrial-scale DAC plant in Hinwil, Switzerland, and the world’s largest DAC+S plant, Orca, in Hellisheidi, Iceland.

Three different climates, different renewable energies, and different approaches to carbon storage

Widespread deployment of DAC systems in the U.S. must account for wide variations in regional climates. Temperature and relative humidity can impact the efficiency of CO₂ removal technologies.

The ISTC-led team will address climate efficiency challenges by testing the large-scale DAC systems and storing the captured CO₂ at three test sites across the U.S., examining the effects of different climate conditions on CO₂ storage.

• Hot and very dry climate – A test site in southern California near the Salton Sea will be powered by geothermal energy, with the captured CO₂ stored in a saline aquifer.
• Hot and humid climate – A test site in Louisiana will use solar energy to power the DAC system while storing the captured CO₂ in a saline aquifer.
• Midcontinental climate – A test site in Wyoming will operate using wind power and store the captured CO₂ in a depleted natural gas reservoir.

In addition to Climeworks, major partners in the project consortium include Kiewit Power Engineers, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Gulf Coast Sequestration, North Shore Energy, Sunpower, Ormat, and Sentinel Peak.

For more information, read the entire DOE announcement.

Media contacts: Kevin OBrien, kcobrien@illinois.edu; news@prairie.illinois.edu

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded $25 million to a three-year project led by the Prairie Research Institute that will design a next-generation power plant in Springfield, Illinois. The innovative plant design combines multiple techniques to both reduce emissions and capture and re-use carbon dioxide.

“With this project, we’re bringing together different pieces of the sustainable energy puzzle,” said Kevin OBrien, who is principal investigator of this project and leads the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) and Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS). “PRI’s scientists have been advancing emissions reduction, carbon capture, and carbon utilization, and this gives us an opportunity to combine all of our expertise and experience in these areas to deliver greater impact.”

The project (Front-End Engineering Design Study for Hybrid Gas Turbine and USC Coal Boiler (HGCC) Concept Plant with Post Combustion Carbon Capture and Energy Storage System at City, Water, Light and Power Plant) is part of DOE’s Coal FIRST (Flexible, Innovative, Resilient, Small, Transformative) initiative, which aims to spur innovation in coal-fired plants. While renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, account for an increasing proportion of U.S. electricity generation, these sources are variable; coal provides a stable source of power, ensuring that consumer demand can be met consistently.

Components of the design proposed by PRI scientists and their collaborators include:

• A 270-megawatt ultra-supercritical coal boiler subsystem
• An 87-megawatt natural gas combustion turbine generator subsystem
• A 50-megawatt energy storage subsystem
• A post-combustion carbon dioxide (CO₂) capture subsystem
• An algae-basedCO₂ utilization subsystem

“While these individual components have been used before, they’ve never been combined in this way,” OBrien said. “Part of our aim with this project is to standardize and modularize these components, so this design can be replicated and more easily maintained. We hope this could become the global standard for innovative, low-emission coal-fired power.”

An ultra-supercritical system operates at intense pressure, which means steam is more efficiently converted to the mechanical energy that drives the turbines to produce electricity. Increased efficiency means less coal is needed for each megawatt of power produced, reducing emissions.

Including both natural gas combustion and energy storage will provide greater flexibility and resiliency. Varying demand is tough on coal-fired boilers, because frequent shut-downs and start-ups cause huge swings in temperature and pressure that cause stress on their components. Natural gas systems don’t suffer the same stresses; they can ramp up quickly to meet surging demand and can be shut down when demand drops. Likewise, the energy storage subsystem will enable the plant to store energy to meet fluctuating consumer needs for power.

An additional benefit is that the exhaust from the natural gas system can be used to pre-heat the coal system, reducing how much coal needs to be used.

The proposed design also includes technology, developed by Linde PLC BASF, to capture carbon emissions before they reach the environment. ISTC is overseeing a large pilot test of the performance, safety, and environmental compliance of this technology at Springfield’s City Water, Light, and Power (CWLP) plant.

Finally, the captured CO₂ will be used to help grow algae that can be converted into biofuel, animal feed, or biochar soil supplement.

Subawardees for the project include:

• Doosan Heavy Industries, the developer of the HGCC technology and one of the world’s leading developers of boilers and turbines;
• Kiewit, one of the leading engineering, procurement, and construction firms for power generation-related construction, and;
• Global Algae Innovations, a company that specializes in the deployment of large-scale algae systems.

Other participants include Barr Engineering Co. (firing systems), Microbeam (fuel treatment), Envergex (control systems), and the University of North Dakota (additional coal sources).

This three-year front-end engineering design (FEED) study will provide DOE with a detailed understanding of the costs of scaling up this power plant design and could pave the way for the construction of this innovative plant in Springfield.

The City, Water, Light and Power plant in Springfield was chosen as the project site because it is already the test site for the carbon-capture system, its planned retirement of three older, less efficient boilers creates space for the hybrid coal-natural gas system, and a DOE CarbonSAFE project conducted by the Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS) previously demonstrated that the region’s geology will support underground storage of CO₂.

OBrien and co-principal investigator Mohamed Attalla, director of U of I Facilities & Services, and ISTC project manager Les Gioja lead the project, providing combined expertise in power generation technologies, clean-energy generation, and large-scale construction.

ISGS continues studying CO₂ sequestration near Terre Haute, Indiana

ISGS is participating in a second DOE Coal FIRST project, which will study the potential redevelopment of the Wabash Valley Resources coal gasification site in West Terre Haute, Indiana. That team, led by Wabash Valley Resources, seeks to convert the existing plant so it can burn biomass as well as coal while producing hydrogen that can be used to generate electricity or sold as a product. This project will capture CO₂ for storage in nearby deep saline reservoirs and aims to achieve net-negative carbon emissions by sequestering more carbon than it produces. This connects to an ongoing CarbonSAFE project that ISGS is carrying out at the Wabash Valley Resources site, studying the feasibility of developing commercial-scale CO₂ storage at the location.

These projects are supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory.

Related stories

• Read more about PRI’s carbon capture projects
• Read more about PRI’s carbon storage projects

This story originally appeared on the Prairie Research Institute Blog. Read the original article.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced funding for Phase II of ISTC’s project titled ”Large Pilot Testing of Linde/BASF Advanced Post-Combustion CO₂ Capture Technology at Coal Fired Power Plant”. ISTC will receive $2,998,040 in funding from DOE for Phase II.

During Phase II, the project team will continue plans to design, construct, and operate an advanced amine-based post-combustion carbon dioxide (CO₂) capture system at a coal-fired power plant using technology developed by Linde/BASF. City Water, Light, and Power’s Dallman Unit 4 generating station in Springfield, IL will serve as the host for Phase II. The project will allow for knowledge-sharing with coal-fired plant generators across the U.S. and beyond, leading to larger scale operations to reduce energy costs and limit emissions.

“This first-of-its-kind large scale demonstration is vital to the carbon capture knowledge base and experience and will serve as a reference for future commercial projects,” said Kevin C OBrien, ISTC’s director and the project lead. “Technology that helps keep energy costs low while limiting carbon emissions is of interest to communities in the region, our nation, and internationally. The successful completion of this phase and subsequent project phases will demonstrate the technical feasibility of the retrofit and provide a blueprint for power facilities globally. Installing capture facilities to coal-fired power plants also contributes to workforce and professional development opportunities, which are especially critical for economically depressed regions being hit hard due to the collapse of the coal industry and its related supply chain.”

City Water, Light, and Power (CWLP) is a municipally-owned utility that supplies electric and water services for residents and businesses of Springfield, IL. The Dallman 4 unit with an approximate nameplate generating capacity of over 200 MW, was commissioned in 2009, and is the largest and newest of CWLP’s four generating units.

Doug Brown, Chief Utility Engineer at CWLP said, “We are excited to be involved in a project that manages CO₂ emissions. It fits well with our interest in supplying energy and water to Springfield in a highly sustainable fashion. We welcome the opportunity for CWLP to be one of the largest R&D capture pilots from a global perspective.”

Learn more about the project at https://go.illinois.edu/large-scale-carbon-capture.