Vattenfall Pilots Twin Technology 30 MW Carbon Separation Plant in Germany

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas) Sweden's electrical power major Vattenfall ( XETRA : VTT. DE) (Stockholm) is investing $110 million in a pilot plant utilizing CO2 separation technologies to support CCS (carbon capture and storage). The 30 MW plant project will be launched in Germany at Janschwalde (Brandenburg) in the middle of this year and will be operated to optimize the oxyfuel technology, which has been successfully demonstrated at laboratory level and pre-combustion technology.

The 3,000 MW lignite (brown coal) fed Janschwalde power plant has six 500 MW units, and in the demonstration phase one of the units, consisting of two boilers, will be equipped with CSS technologies. One new-built boiler will use oxyfuel technology and the other will be retrofitted with post-combustion technology.

The oxyfuel application employs oxygen mixed with re-circulated flue gas firing pulverized fuel (PF) in boilers to reduce the net volume of flue gases from the process. This method substantially increases the concentration of CO2 in the flue gases compared to normal air-fed combustion, which produces a concentration of about 15%.The oxyfuel method can theoretically produce 95% concentration, thus achieving near zero carbon emissions. The technology can be retrofitted to power plants and when applied to new plants results in a capital saving on flue gas cleaning equipment.

Post-combustion technology is an exhaust scrubbing system that captures CO2 after the combustion process and has been developed over a period and can be retrofitted without entailing full integration into the existing plant's processes. The technology converts natural gas or coal into a hydrogen rich gas and captures CO2. The hydrogen gas is used to feed gas fired power plants resulting in low CO2 emissions.

To balance out the loss of efficiency caused by the introduction of new components in the generation process Vattenfall is currently developing methods to increase efficiency and optimum operation levels.

When the pilot plant is in full scale operation by 2015 Vattenfall will invest $1.58 billion into the full scale commercial application of CCS at Janschwalde applying technological solutions developed during the pilot plant's run The company is also cooperating with Gaz de France Production and Exploration in Germany to test technology for storing the captured CO2 in a depleted natural gas field in the Altmark region.

Vattenfall is one of 16 leading Swedish and Norwegian companies participating in the formation of the Nordic Climate Cluster (NoCC), an open network for players that wish to work on industrial solutions for the energy and environmental field.

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