NRG Completes World's Largest Carbon-Capture Project

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--NRG Energy Incorporated (NYSE:NRG) (Princeton, New Jersey) and JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corporation (Tokyo, Japan) recently completed construction of the Petra Nova carbon-capture project at the W.A. Parish Power Station in Thompsons, Texas. NRG called it the world's largest post-combustion carbon capture system, which captures carbon dioxide (CO2) from the exhaust of the combustion process by absorbing it in a suitable solvent. Industrial Info is tracking more than $19.7 billion in active projects related to carbon capture and/or storage in North America.

NRG says the $1 billion Petra Nova carbon-capture project first captured CO2 in mid-September 2016, and since has delivered more than 100,000 tons of captured CO2 via a $100 million pipeline to the West Ranch Oil Field in Jackson County, Texas. The process reduces emissions 90% at the 610-megawatt (MW) Unit 8, an Alstom CE Pulverized Coal Tangential-Fired Dry Bottom Boiler, and transports the captured CO2 via the roughly 82-mile pipeline. NRG and JX Nippon each own half of the West Ranch Oil Field, where the CO2 will be injected into existing wells as part of an enhanced oil-recovery (EOR) process. For more information, see Industrial Info's project reports on the carbon-capture process and the West Ranch pipeline.

"Completion of the Petra Nova project is an important milestone in our quest to help ensure reliable, affordable and increasingly cleaner energy from fossil fuels," said Mauricio Gutierrez, the president and chief executive officer of NRG Energy, in a press release. "This project represents another major step in NRG's effort to reduce our carbon emissions and create a more sustainable energy future, and we are proud that this accomplishment was achieved on-budget and on-schedule in a competitive energy environment."

NRG said in the press release that the Petra Nova project is capable of capturing more than 5,000 tons of CO2 per day, or more than 1.6 million tons per year, the equivalent of taking more than 350,000 cars off the road. Shunsaku Miyake, the president and chief executive officer of JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration, added that it also "will contribute to significantly increasing incremental crude oil production from legacy oil fields."

According to Reuters, the U.S. Department of Energy contributed $190 million to the project's construction, with $250 million in loans from the Japanese government. NRG and JX Nippon split the remaining $600 million portion of the price tag.

The highest-valued carbon-capture project under construction in North America is Southern Company's (NYSE:SO) (Atlanta, Georgia) $6.95 billion Transport Reactor Integrated Gasification Combined-Cycle (TRIG-IGCC) Power Station in Kemper County, Mississippi, which the owner says is approaching its in-service date, despite years of hurdles and delays. The latest, which concerned the gas clean-up systems for the gasifiers, added about $34 million to the price tag, according to Atlanta Business Chronicle.

As with Petra Nova, CO2 collected at the 582-megawatt (MW) Southern Company plant would be used in EOR operations. The facility will use Syngas to fuel two Siemens combustion turbine generators, each with a capacity of 232 MW, and a 360-MW Toshiba tandem compound, double-flow steam turbine generator. For more information, see Industrial Info's project report.

In Canada, Canadian Natural Resources Limited (NYSE:CNQ) (Calgary, Alberta) is at work on a smaller, $19 million pilot plant at the Horizon Oil Sands upgrader near Fort McMurray, Alberta. The company hopes to cut emissions at the existing, 135,000-BBL/d upgrader by converting CO2 to algae, then to fertilizer, to used as a biofuel. If the pilot plant is successful, the company will proceed with the proposed, $1 billion carbon capture and storage addition. For more information, see Industrial Info's project reports on the pilot plant and the proposed addition.

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