Alstom and Schlumberger Sign Joint Offering to Evaluate CCS Systems

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Energy and transport infrastructure company Alstom SA (EPA:ALO) (Levallois-Perret, France) and oilfield services company Schlumberger Limited (NYSE:SLB) (Houston, Texas) recently announced that they have signed an agreement for a mutual collaboration under which they will study the technical readiness of power plants to accommodate carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems developed by Alstom. The study will identify steps that a power plant must take to adapt to the CCS systems, evaluate potential storage sites for carbon dioxide (CO2), and also assess the future costs of transporting and storing CO2. The joint offering has been designed so that power plants can incorporate CCS in the future and secure environmental permits easily. The evaluation and subsequent guidelines offered by the joint study will also help power plants optimize time-to-market periods along with associated costs.

Evaluating the CCS-readiness of large fossil-fuelled power plants will be mandatory in Europe from 2011. Queensland, Australia, has also announced that it will not grant approval to any new coal-based power plant that is not CCS-ready. Consequently, Alstom is being increasingly approached by customers to ensure that the company's new thermal power plants are CCS-ready. According to Andreas Lusch, Senior Vice President of Alstom Power Thermal Systems, Alstom's customers are seeking support for their complete facilities, from the flue gas outlet up to the downhole safety valve. Vice President of Schlumberger Carbon Services John Tombari added that the joint offering will help customers optimize project development and fine-tune the entire technical and economic capture, transport and storage chain.

The two companies are pioneers and leaders in the development of CCS technologies. Alstom brings advanced knowledge of oxy-combustion and post-combustion capture technologies and experience with the company's proprietary Plant Integrator concept. Schlumberger Carbon Services, on the other hand, brings to the joint offering its resources, expertise and technologies in managing every stage of geological CO2-storage projects.

A majority of the climate-change targets that have been announced so far call for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by about 50% by 2030 and 100% by 2050. The joint offering will now enable power plant owners meet these target dates in the face of strict environmental rules and regulations.

The CCS system at the Mountaineer power plant developed by utility company American Electric Power Company Incorporated (NYSE:AEP) (AEP) (Columbus, Ohio) and the Schwarze Pumpe plant developed by Vattenfall AB (Stockholm, Sweden) in Germany are two of the first large-scale CCS demonstration projects. The Schwarze Pumpe pilot plant was inaugurated in September 2008 and became the world's first pilot plant to use the oxyfuel capture method. The plant is expected to run for at least a decade. The oxyfuel method burns fuel in an environment of pure oxygen rather than air, and the resulting flue gas is rich in CO2, which can be easily separated and captured. Fuel consumption is also lower since the nitrogen content of air does not need heating.

The Mountaineer power plant in New Haven, West Virginia, will use chilled ammonia to capture CO2 after combustion. The gas will then be liquefied and injected into two wells at the power plant site. The technology has been developed by Alstom, and the pilot project will remove more than 100,000 tons of CO2 per year from the 8.5 million tons annually emitted by the plant. For additional information, see article from October 26, 2009 - Power Plant Carbon Sequestration Era Begins at Mountaineer.

Alstom CO2 Capture Systems is one of the leading carbon capture technology incorporators. Alstom has signed agreements with several power, utility, and oil and gas companies in the U.S. and Europe since 2006 to test CO2 capture technologies. These companies are AEP, E.ON AG (OTC:EONGY) (Dusseldorf, Germany), The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) (Midland, Michigan), PGE Elektrownia Belchatow SA (Belchatow, Poland), StatoilHydro ASA (NYSE:STO) (Stavanger, Norway), and Vattenfall. Alstom has so far begun operating five CO2 capture pilot projects with E.ON, EPRI (Sun Prairie, Wisconsin), We Energies (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), Dow, Total SA (NYSE:TOT) (Paris, France) and Vattenfall.

A CCS pilot system developed by Aker Clean Carbon AS (Fornebu, Norway) is being operated at the Longannet coal-fire power station in Fife, Scotland. The company is now part of a CCS consortium comprising Royal Dutch Shell plc (NYSE:RDS.A) (The Hague, Netherlands), National Grid plc (NYSE:NGG) (London, England), and Scottish Power Limited (Glasgow, Scotland). The consortium aims to set up the first commercial CCS system in Britain at Longannet by 2014.

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