RWE Power has been granted permission to build and operate a pilot carbon capture facility at the coal innovation centre at its lignite fired Niederaussem power plant in Germany. Starting in mid-2009, the facility will capture around 300 kg/h of CO2 from a partial flue gas stream and enable RWE to test all aspects of CO2 scrubbing under real conditions. RWE’s object is to gain experience for the development of large-scale carbon capture and storage systems, and it aims to be able to retrofit large-scale coal fired power plants with CCS technology from 2020.
The carbon capture project is part of RWE’s CCS development programme, which also involves BASF and the Linde Group. RWE is also planning to construct a CCS pilot facility in Wales, at Aberthaw hard coal plant, and has already commissioned a combustion testing facility at Didcot in the UK that enables it to research CCS technologies.
“We have to advance all technologies at the same time in order to achieve the utmost in efficiency and climate protection as soon as possible,” said RWE Power CEO Dr. Johannes Lambertz. “Before modern coal-fired power plants can be equipped with CO2 capturing systems on a large scale, the overall processes have to be tested in practice when interacting with a power plant.”
Under their co-operation agreement with RWE, BASF is testing new, energy-efficient scrubbing suspensions for capturing CO2 from flue gas, while Linde is optimising plant engineering to reduce the amount of energy consumed by CCS systems.
The Niederaussem project has a cost estimate of EUR9 million, 40 per cent of which will be subsidised by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.
