Nuon to Invest $53 Million in Large-Scale Test Facility in Netherlands for Carbon Capture and Storage

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Energy provider NV Nuon (Amsterdam, Netherlands) will invest $53 million on a large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) test project at its Buggenum, Netherlands, power generation facility in the Limburg province. Construction of the project is expected to commence shortly and be ready for operations by the second half of 2010. The test installation is to be set up in five parts. Most of the components will be transported to the site by water and then assembled in Buggenum. A building contract has already been signed with SPIE Controlec BV (Schiedam, Netherlands). The project has been issued with all the necessary permits.

The test project is expected to last for two years and will help Nuon gain useful knowledge and experience before setting up a large-scale CCS plant at its proposed coal-based power project, Nuon Magnum, In Eemshaven near Groningen, Netherlands. By installing the CCS unit at a power plant, the company intends to make the method suitable for the electrical sector. Nuon's current carbon-capture facilities can capture around 80% of the carbon dioxide emitted, but the company intends to increase efficiency with the new project. Nuon expects that with carbon-dioxide storage, the emissions at Nuon Magnum will be reduced by about 2 million to 2.5 million tons per year. Nuon Magnum will be based on a multi-fuel concept using the unique combination of coal with biomass and carbon-dioxide capture. A combination of coal gasification with biomass and natural gas is currently one of the least polluting methods of electricity generation.

According to Oystein Loseth, CEO of Nuon, fuels at the Buggenum power plant are already gasified, and hence it would be possible to capture carbon before the combustion process. This is a cleaner, less expensive and more efficient alternative to post-combustion carbon capture that also requires less space to be set up. Nuon is the first northern European company to use the pre-combustion technique for carbon capture.

Nuon's CCS project has garnered a lot of interest. The company has already received a $13 million subsidy from the Ministry of Economic Affairs through the Unieke Kansen Regeling (Unique Opportunities Scheme). A research program linked to the project involves the prestigious Delft University of Technology (Delft, Netherlands), Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (Petten, Netherlands), KEMA (Arnhem, Netherlands) and The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (Delft).

Carbon-capture technology has been used by the petrochemical industry for more than five decades, but carbon-dioxide capture combined with biomass and coal gasification has not been attempted until more recent times. If Nuon can establish the success of the method, the quantity of greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere by fossil-fuel-based power generators would be reduced drastically, and the captured carbon would be buried underground. By exploring the new possibility, Nuon is also helping the government meet climate targets.

In the coal-gasification technology to be used at Nuon Magnum, coal will first be converted to a combustible gas called syngas. After cleaning and desulfurization, the resulting gas is almost as pure as natural gas and is ready to be used in a steam and gas turbine to produce electricity. This technology is known as integrated gasification combined cycle electricity production.

The 1,300-megawatt (MW) Nuon Magnum will be set up in two phases. While Phase I will be based on natural gas and is expected to be operational from 2011, Phase II will involve coal and biomass gasification technology. The power plant is expected to fulfill the electricity needs of two million households.

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