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The world's first commercial-scale Carbon Capture and Storage coal power station has been commissioned in Saskatchewan, Canada.
The opening of the plant is a major milestone for the fledgling carbon capture and storage (CCS) industry across the world because it is the first time the technology has been integrated into a commercial scale coal power plant.
The 776MW Boundary Dam Power Station, near Estevan, Saskatchewan is the world's largest operating CCS project. It is also the first in the world to demonstrate the entire chain of carbon capture and storage for power generation from end-to-end.
An anime-based post-combustion system has been added to one of three remaining boiler units at the ageing power station, which was originally commissioned in 1959. The CCS plant captures up to 90% of the CO2 emitted from one138MW unit, reducing its capacity to 110MW and its greenhouse gas emissions by one million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.
The CCS plant captures around 3000 tonnes of CO2 per day. Around 2000 tonnes of this is being injected into a 3.4km deep brine-filled sandstone geological store called Aquistore nearby to the power station. The remainder of the CO2 is being sold and used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
The Aquistore will act as “buffer storage” for Saskpower’s commercial EOR activity. Speaking at a CCS conference at the British Geolgical Society in London earlier this year, Rik Chalaturnyk, chair of Reservoir Geomechanics at the University of Alberta and member of Aquistore’s scientific and engineering research committee, said: “The biggest value for carbon capture and storage research is that this will turn on and off at different rates. There is enough instrumentation to provide valuable information on the dynamics and transition in the well that will be useful for commercial scale operations.”
Luke Warren, chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, said: “The launch today goes beyond a single project. Saskpower has made significant progress in demonstrating a viable technical, environmental and economic case for the application of CCS to power plants. It is hoped that Boundary Dam will form part of a much needed commercial proof point that the economics make sense.”
Several large-scale carbon capture and storage projects are due to come online in the next two to three years, including in the US, Canada, Australia and Holland.
The UK has two projects in the running for a £1bn commercialisation competition, the White Rose project at Drax and Scottish and Southern's Peterhead project.