90% of carbon dioxide can be removed!

E.ON to build pilot plant for CO2 capture
The method is currently being developed by Alstom, the power generation specialist.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

E.ON will be testing a new process in Sweden that can be used to remove up to 90 per cent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) from power plant flue gases.
The method is currently being developed by Alstom, the power generation specialist. E.ON and Alstom have now agreed to continue developing the technology at E.ON’s power plant at Karlshamn to a stage where it can be used in the actual environment of a power plant. The pilot plant at Karlshamn is to start trial operation in early 2008.
"For E.ON, carbon dioxide capture from power plants is one of the key technologies in tackling the global climate change problem. This is why E.ON is pushing the development of different processes in all markets as part of its technology initiative. In its quest for the best technology, the company is investigating various solutions in a number of parallel projects," the company said.
The method to be used at Karlshamn is based on the technology that involves the use of ammonia to capture the carbon dioxide. The key advantage is that this cleaning process uses less energy than other CO2 removal processes, so its impact on the overall efficiency of the power plant is relatively low. Experts expect the first almost CO2-free commercial power plants to come on line in 15 to 20 years.
As part of a carbon capture and storage initiative, efforts are currently underway worldwide to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the flue gases of power plants for safe storage. Three technologies are under development: Pre-combustion capture, Post-combustion capture and Oxyfuel technology.
The pre-combustion involves the use of a gasification process to convert the coal into a fuel gas which is stripped of its CO2 before combustion in a combined-cycle power plant to produce electricity.
In the post-combustion capture CO2 is removed from the flue gas stream by solvent washing, whereas the Oxyfuel process uses pure oxygen instead of air for the combustion of coal or natural gas, so the flue gases produced consist mainly of CO2 and water, which makes CO2 removal relatively easy.
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