E.ON Green Lights Kingsnorth Carbon Capture Project

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--German energy giant E.ON AG (OTC:EONGY) (Dusseldorf) is moving ahead with plans to construct a carbon capture and storage (CCS) system at the Kingsnorth coal-fired plant in Kent, England, by awarding contracts to Foster Wheeler AG (NASDAQ:FWLT) (Clinton, New Jersey) and its partner Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Incorporated (TYO:7011) (MHI) (Tokyo, Japan).

The companies have been contracted to support the front-end engineering design (FEED) for a post-combustion carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and compression plant proposed as part of E.ON's planned supercritical coal-fired power station in Kent. E.ON hopes to replace existing coal-fired units at the 1,940-megawatt (MW) plant with two, high-efficiency 800-MW coal-fired units using the latest supercritical technology. However, E.ON has run into a great deal of opposition to its proposed overhaul of Kingsnorth. In October last year, the company pulled the plug on replacing the old units, saying that any investment would be delayed up to three years because of the global recession. For additional information, see October 12, 2009, article - E.ON Shelves £1.5 Billion Kingsnorth Coal-Fired Plant Replacement.

The planned CO2 capture plant will be designed to separate and capture CO2 from flue gas generated by the coal-fired units, enabling the CO2 to be transported and stored permanently in a depleted gas reservoir under the North Sea.

E.ON, along with ScottishPower (Glasgow, Scotland), were awarded vital funding by the U.K. government in March to advance their CCS projects at the Kingsnorth and Longannet coal-fired power plants. The funding allows the companies to move their pilot projects to the next stage of development, which will increase the plants to full commercial scale by the 2014 deadline. Both companies are competing in the government's CCS-funding competition, which will award hundreds of millions of pounds to the winner to help create a commercial-scale CCS plant. For additional information, see related article from March 16, 2010 - E.ON and ScottishPower Awarded CCS Funding.

Rival Scottish and Southern Energy plc (OTC:SSEZY) (Perth, Scotland) also received government funding in late March to develop its carbon-capture pilot at the Ferrybridge coal-fired power station in West Yorkshire. At 5 MW, it is the largest proposed CCS pilot in the U.K. For additional information, see related article from March 23, 2010 - Scottish and Southern Energy Wins Funding for U.K.'s Largest Carbon-Capture Pilot.

CCS is a crucial topic for energy companies in the U.K. In April 2009, the U.K. government told energy companies that new coal-fired plants could not be built unless CCS facilities were included in the design. For additional information, see related item from April 29, 2009 - U.K. Cracks Down on Coal-Fired Plants.

"We are delighted to continue to play a key role in this landmark project, planned to include one of the world's first industrial-scale plants capturing CO2 from flue gases and the U.K.'s first supercritical units," said Umberto della Sala, president and chief operating officer of Foster Wheeler AG. "We believe that the combination of our expertise in delivering innovative, technically optimised engineered solutions and MHI's leading CO2 recovery technology will continue to add significant value for E.ON as it progresses in its objective to win this competition."

MHI's CO2 recovery technology is known as the KM-CDR Process, which uses the company's proprietary KS-1 solvent for CO2 absorption and desorption. To date, MHI has delivered seven commercial plants for CO2 recovery from natural gas-fired flue gas. Regarding CO2 recovery from coal-fired flue gas, which contains more impurities, MHI has conducted small-scale demonstration testing for CO2 recovery from coal-fired flue gas at 10 tons per day from 2006 through 2008. It is currently developing a 500-ton-per-day demonstration plant for The Southern Company (NYSE:SO) (Atlanta, Georgia), which will come online next year.

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