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Saskatchewan Taking The Lead On Carbon Capture And Storage
By Lynda Harrison
New Technology Magazine, May 2009 - There 's more to Saskatchewan than
inexpensive real estate, a burgeoning oil and gas industry and golden
prairie.
Boasting a university that's getting world famous, a ground-breaking
international pilot project and a company that specializes in commercializing
carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, the province is fast becoming
known as a world leader in research into carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and
storage.
Some of the world's top experts on CCS work at the University of Regina
(UofR), which has two major testing facilities: a semi-commercial CO2 extraction
demonstration plant adjacent to SaskPower's Boundary Dam power station and a
development pilot plant, the International Test Centre for CO2 Capture (ITC).
The ITC has been recognized by the International Energy Agency as one of the
best CO2 capture research facilities in the world.
![[Figure 1]](NTM2009_UO000000.png)
The Boundary Dam CO2 recovery facility is used to evaluate the performance
and reliability of solvent absorption-based technologies as well as to obtain
process design information under a wide range of operating conditions.
The technology development natural gas plant at the ITC tests and evaluates
the performance of solvent absorption-based CO2 capture from natural gas exhaust
streams. The facility can control, monitor and record the full spectrum of
process parameters. It is now being used to test and develop cost-effective
strategies for capturing CO2 using enhanced post-combustion scrubbing
technologies, including minimizing the energy needs for solvent regeneration in
the stripping column and other alternative operating procedures.
Some of the university's engineers and scientists
have been working on CCS for more than 20 years. "Two of the leaders and the
most published, technical people in the world are at the University of Regina,"
says Jeff Allison, senior vice-president of HTC Purenergy Inc., which has a
licence agreement with the university to commercialize the school's CO2 capture
technologies. "We've worked on projects all over the world, putting together
design and engineering for CO2 capture plants on coal plants and natural
gas-fired plants," says Allison. The company has engineered projects in Norway
and Australia, and is working on some in the Middle East and elsewhere that have
not yet been announced, he says.
The two leaders Allison refers to are Malcolm Wilson and Paitoon
Tontiwachwuthikul. Wilson is the director of energy and environment at the UofR
and a member of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
which was a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, along with former United
States vice-president Al Gore. Wilson is a recognized pioneer in CCS and has
been advising governments, industry and organizations for more than two
decades.
![[Figure 2]](NTM2009_UO000001.png)
Tontiwachwuthikul is the school's dean of engineering. He is the leader of
the CO2 capture program at the UofR and played a key role in establishing the
ITC in Regina. He has published more than 180 peer-reviewed papers on CO2
capture.
Wilson says the UofR's most promising technology is basically ready to become
commercial but first needs to be attached to a coal-or natural gas-fired power
plant to determine actual costs of a full-scale system. Current estimates are
that the thermal kinetics optimization (TKO) system will improve energy
efficiency and thus cut operating costs by around 10%. "It's not cheap but
neither is moving to renewable energy," says Wilson.
The TKO system removes CO2 from power plants' flue gases and reduces the
steam used in the process. The pure CO2 is then compressed and transported for
storage in the deep subsurface. Only 13% of what comes out of coal-fired power
plants and only four per cent from natural gas-fired ones is CO2, he says.
![[Figure 3]](NTM2009_UO000002.png)
Recently the government of Saskatchewan, Royal Dutch Shell plc and the UofR
launched a new international centre designed to help make Western Canada a
global leader in the worldwide deployment and acceptance of CCS. The
International Performance Assessment Centre for Geologic Storage of CO2, located
at the UofR, will focus on:
. assessing the risk planning on CCS projects around the world and
advising on the proper management of technical issues and performance
monitoring;
. informing stakeholders and the public about CCS from an independent,
science-based perspective; and,
. networking internationally to share and build on the findings of
other research organizations.
Collaborating at the centre are: the University of Calgary, the University of
Alberta, Dalhousie University and groups in Australia, Europe, South Africa and
Brazil, with the potential of China and India joining. The group held its first
meeting in February. Wilson is its acting director.
Saskatchewan is also home to the internationally recognized Weyburn Enhanced
Oil Recovery CO2 Project, the world's first CO2 measuring, monitoring and
verification initiative. Launched in 2000, the $80-million international project
studies CO2 injection and storage in oilfields. The goal of the project's final
phase (2005-2011) is to deliver the framework necessary to encourage
implementation of CO2 geological storage on a worldwide basis.
Word of the university's accomplishments is getting out. The UofR held a
session to profile its worldwide reputation as a leader in CCS technology at the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Poznan, Poland, in
December 2008.
And three of the UofR's process systems engineering group --
Tontiwachwuthikul, Raphael Idem and Don Gelowitz -- have been awarded Canadian
Innovation Awards for developing a variety of CO2 capture technologies and
processes that include:
. optimum equipment selection processes for CO2 capture plants;
. techniques for optimizing the economics and operation of CO2 capture
plants; and,
. a number of other process improvements, devices, designs and software
applications for CO2 capture.
They also developed a group of reactive liquid absorbents to remove CO2 from
flue gas.
Advancing projects
HTC and the UofR have more than 20 years of affiliated research, test and
optimization operating experience in CO2 capture systems. One of HTC's latest
CO2 capture products is a modular, pre-engineered system that will capture CO2
from the flue gas exhaust of power plants and large industrial emitters. Based
on technology developed at the university, the Purenergy CCS 1000 can be
retrofitted to existing coal-fired power plants. It was launched commercially in
December 2007.
"You get a lot of people arguing that post-combustion CO2 capture isn't very
cost effective, but it is," says Allison. "It's significantly more effective to
put a CO2 capture [system] on an existing coal plant and make that coal plant
effective for maybe one or two cents a kilowatt versus spending probably twice
that or three times that to put in solar or wind. Plus it's a lot more reliable.
That's what we've been doing -- working on ways to make the process more
efficient."
HTC is working on a number of CO2 capture design projects around the world.
It has recently delivered front-end engineering and design for the construction
of a European CO2 test centre at Mongstad, Norway, in conjunction with its
consortium partner, Bechtel Overseas Corporation. The Mongstad project will
demonstrate that CO2 capture technology is viable and that the technology can be
used in large-scale CO2 capture plants. Scheduled to begin operations in 2010,
the experience gained from this project will be used to build a large-scale,
two-million-tonnes-per-year CO2 capture facility.
In addition, HTC is studying the potential of an amine-based CO2 capture
facility on a coal-fired power plant for EPCOR Power Development
Corporation.
HTC and Global Energy, Inc. have formed Cincinnatibased Carbon Management
Technologies LLC to deliver CO2 management, sequestration and EOR solutions to
gasification projects and facilities in the United States.
Last June, the company announced a new CO2 capture cost-reduction
breakthrough: the TKO process which it says reduces steam consumption by up to
30%. The process improves capture through heat recovery, thermal balancing and
optimized process flow. The primary advantage of the newly patented system is
that it directly reduces the largest single cost of CO2 capture -- the use of
power plant steam -- to a ratio of below one unit of steam required to one unit
CO2 captured, says the company.
And in November the UofR, St. Francis Xavier University (StFX) and HTC signed
a memorandum of understanding to introduce innovative measurement, monitoring
and verification technologies at CCS projects around the world. The technologies
were developed by David Risk, an earth scientist and assistant professor at
StFX's Environmental Sciences Research Centre.
While the previously mentioned technologies relate to carbon capture, Risk's
work is on the side of monitoring and assessing, well, risk. He has two
technologies -- hardware and software -- that are complementary and expected to
go commercial within the year. The hardware, a small monitoring probe called a
flux solde, measures ground surface CO2 emissions. It has no moving parts, is
easily replicated, very simple and works in harsh environments like Canada's, he
says. "We're even proving it under snow, which is an environment that's very
tough for other monitoring technologies." It's not cheap, though. Dozens, even
hundreds of these so-called nodes, which are expected to cost a few thousand
dollars each, are placed over a large area. They beam information to a central
location, requiring infrequent checking.
The software, called Flux Map, answers how many probes are needed and where,
and works with all commercially available instruments. The software can design a
statistically robust network and at later stages in the project help identify
leaks. "Because it's a statistical approach it helps identify where there are
statistical anomalies in the network," says Risk.
Wilson is convinced that all this research is leading to widespread use of
CCS to combat climate change, but the economic climate is not helping. "Quite
clearly, we're demonstrating that research can bring down the costs," he says.
"But to get widespread deployment, we really need to confirm what those costs
are, based on our pilots."
So far, indications are that costs can come down by around 30% from estimates
that are currently being given for field-built units. Exact numbers are needed
and to get them a project must be built to commercial scale, probably at a
number of plants around the world. "We're working against current financial
circumstances globally. People don't have money to invest in this type of thing
at the moment."
Contacts For More Information
Malcolm Wilson, University of Regina Tel: (306) 585-5646 E-mail: Malcolm.Wilson@uregina.ca
Jeff Allison, HTC Purenergy Tel: (306) 352-6132 E-mail: jallison@htcenergy.com
David Risk, St. Francis Xavier University
Tel:(902) 872-2861 E-mail: drisk@stfx.ca
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