A demonstration test for capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide recovered from emissions from a coal-fired power generation plant, conducted jointly by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Southern Company Services has successfully completed an initial demonstration phase. This, says MHI, brings into view the feasibility of a large-scale capture system for CO2 recovered from coal-fired power plants. Based on this success, MHI will now accelerate its programme seeking to achieve commercially viable technology for recovering CO2 from the flue gas of coal-fired plants.
The demonstration test is an integral part of a project focused on achieving recovery of CO2 emissions on a globally unprecedented scale of 500 tonnes per day (mtpd). To conduct the test, a demonstration plant for separating and recovering CO2 was constructed on the premises of an SCS affiliate’s coal-fired power plant in Alabama.
The demonstration test got under way in June 2011. After verifying the technology for recovering CO2 from the flue gas, as well as recovery performance, integrated capture and sequestration, demonstration testing began in August 2012 and in due course confirmed that high-performance, continuous and stable operation was achievable for a large-scale plant.
In this project, MHI has served as the CO2 recovery process licensor responsible for basic planning and engineering, supply of the CO2 compressors and other core machinery, and technical support during the demonstration test.
The CO2 capture demonstration plant that supplied the CO2 under this project was built jointly by MHI and SCS and is the world’s largest in scale. It consists primarily of a flue-gas scrubber, a flue-gas CO2 capture/re-generation system, CO2 compression machinery, and electrical components. It has the capacity to recover 150 000 metric tons of CO2 per year with recovery efficiency above 90%. For CO2 recovery the facility adopts the trademarked KM CDR Process, which uses a proprietary KS-1 high-performance solvent for CO2 absorption and desorption that was jointly developed by MHI and the Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. Compared with other CO2 capture technologies, says MHI, the KM CDR Process uses significantly less energy.
With the performance of the initial demonstration phase complete, SCS and MHI are currently in discussions concerning the performance of additional demonstration phases and activities utilising the plant.
