POWER September 2014 - 14

Commercial-Scale Carbon
Capture Project Starts
Construction in Texas
Construction on a $1 billion commercialscale
carbon capture and storage (CCS)
system-one of the world's largest to use
post-combustion capture technology-began
this July at NRG Energy's W.A. Parish
Unit 8 near Houston. The facility is expected
to be operational by the end of 2016.
Formerly known as the NRG Energy Parish
CCS Project, it is expected to capture
about 1.6 million tons per annum (Mtpa)
of carbon dioxide (CO2
) from a 240-MW
will then be
-equivalent portion of the flue gas from
Unit 8 (Figure 3). The CO2
compressed and piped through an 82mile-long
pipeline to the West Ranch oil
field for enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
The project received a financial boost
this July as JX Nippon Oil and Gas Exploration
Ltd. bought a 50% stake in NRG Energy
subsidiary Petra Nova Holdings LLC.
The companies now also each own a 25%
interest in the oil field along with Hilcorp
Energy Co. EOR could boost oil production
at the field from around 500 barrels per
day to about 15,000 barrels per day, NRG
Energy said.
The project will use the KM-CDR Process
developed jointly by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
(MHI) and Kansai Electric Power
Co. MHI has since 2006 conducted smallscale
(10 metric tons per day [mtpd])
demonstration testing for CO2
capture
from coal-fired flue gas with J-POWER. In
December 2013, it wrapped up a threeyear
500-mtpd capture demonstration test
at Alabama Power's Plant Barry. By comparison,
the Petra Nova project will have a
CO2
capture capacity of 4,776 mtpd.
The Petra Nova project in 2009 received
$167 million in financing under the third
round of the cost-shared Clean Coal Power
Initiative, of which about $7 million has
been received in the initial design and
engineering phase, NRG Energy said. The
project will also rely on loans of $250 million
from the Japan Bank for International
Cooperation and Mizuho Bank Ltd., backed
by Nippon Export and Investment Insurance.
NRG and JX Nippon are each expected
to contribute $300 million.
The world's only other large-scale postcombustion
capture project for power
generation is being built by SaskPower, an
entity owned solely by the Saskatchewan
government, at the 139-MW Unit 3 of the
Boundary Dam coal-fired power plant near
Estevan. That project, whose anticipated
carbon capture start date was July 2014,
uses an amine absorption process designed
by Shell Global Canosolv.
CO2
from the Boundary Dam project, an
estimated 1 Mtpa, will be used primarily
for EOR at the Weyburn Oil Unit and will
supplement the existing CO2
supply to the
Weyburn-Midale fields delivered by the
205-mile Souris Valley pipeline from the
Great Plains Synfuel gasification facility in
North Dakota. Any CO2
from the project that
is not used in EOR will be injected into a
deep saline formation through SaskPower's
Carbon Storage and Research Centre.
The Global CCS Institute suggests that
at least seven other large-scale postcom3.
A CCS milestone. Construction of a commercial-scale postcombustion carbon capture
project kicked off this July at NRG Energy's W.A. Parish Unit 8 near Houston. The carbon dioxide
(CO2) capture system, which has been renamed the " Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project, " will
consist of a flue-gas quencher, absorber, and regeneration system; a CO2 compression unit; and
utility facilities. Courtesy: Business Wire
bustion capture projects are in various
stages of development worldwide, with
most of the CO2
to be used for enhanced
hydrocarbon recovery.
Along with Petra Nova and Boundary
Dam, only one other large-scale CCS project
at a power plant is actually under construction:
Southern Co. subsidiary Mississippi
Power is rushing to make headway and
open the integrated gasification combined
cycle power plant in Kemper County, Miss.,
in 2015. That project includes a precombustion
carbon capture system that will
use a physical solvent process (Selexol) to
capture 3 Mtpa of CO2
.
A Nuclear Status and
Trend Overview
The world's nuclear power generation
capacity is slated to grow between 17%
and 94% through 2030, the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) forecasts
in its 2013 Annual Report, released this
July. However, it notes, those figures are
slightly lower than projections made in
2012, owing to the continuing impact of
the Fukushima Daiichi accident, the low
price of natural gas, and the increasing
use of renewable energy.
Outlining the world's nuclear power
status and trends, the autonomous international
organization notes that 434
nuclear power reactors were in operation
worldwide with a total generating capacity
of 371.7 GWe at the end of 2013. Last
year, four reactors were connected to the
grid and construction began on 10 new
reactors. Meanwhile, the United Arab
Emirates poured the first concrete for the
second unit at the Barakah site, and Belarus
began construction of the first unit
at the Ostrovets site, becoming the second
country in the past three decades to
start building its first nuclear power plant
(Figure 4).
4. A nuclear novelty. Belarus began
construction of the first unit at the Ostrovets
site in November 2013. This image was taken
in May 2014. Courtesy: Polish National Atomic
Energy Agency
14
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POWER September 2014

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