Pennsylvania Awards $1 Million Grant To Finance CO2 Capture

The Department of Environmental Protection Secretary this week announced a $1 million grant to help finance a project testing new technology designed to capture a minimum of 95 percent of the carbon dioxide (CO2), a major greenhouse gas, from a coal-fired test plant at CONSOL Energy’s Research and Development Division south of Pittsburgh.

The technology will enable world economies to reduce CO2 emissions, a known greenhouse gas, while meeting energy needs necessary for economic growth, and also help to reduce the United States' dependence on foreign oil.

“Our goal is to bring on line the world’s cleanest power plant --- right here near Pittsburgh,” PFBC President Doug Farnham said. “Pennsylvania has always been an energy leader, and with this new technology, we’re working to address tomorrow’s challenges as well. We’re grateful to the state for its support to help us make this a reality.”

The test project combines Pressurized Fluidized Bed Combined Cycle technology, an advanced form of power generation, with carbon dioxide separation technology developed by Sargas Inc. PFBC technology, already operating routinely in Europe and Asia, produces energy more efficiently than any other commercially available coal-fired generation process.

The PFBC technology is designed to reduce emissions by as much as 95 percent, virtually eliminating sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and particulate emissions. The addition of the Sargas technology will reduce CO2 emissions, which will likely be the next phase of required emission reductions for power generation.

“This system produces electricity at competitive prices and can be bolted on to existing plants, potentially making it one part of the answer to balancing economic growth while still combating climate change,” said Sargas CEO Henrik Fleischer. “This technology re-validates the use of coal for generating electricity cleanly.”

“CONSOL has had an interest in PFBC technology as a means of burning waste coal,” said J. Brett Harvey, CONSOL Energy’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Now with the addition of Sargas for CO2 capture, we believe this technology could emerge as the most cost-effective technology for burning a wide variety of fuels, including waste coal and biomass.”

When deployed in a full-scale 400-megawatt commercial plant, PFBC and Sargas’s project is expected to generate 2,978,400,000 kilowatt hours per year of electricity --- enough to power approximately 270,000 homes, while saving 651,437 tons of coal per year.

At full implementation, it is expected to create 150 permanent, full-time jobs, 50 permanent, part-time jobs, 1,000 temporary, full-time jobs, and 90 temporary, part-time jobs.

The first phase of the project focuses on capturing carbon dioxide. Some of the captured carbon could be inserted and stored in deep geological strata, or used for enhanced oil recovery by inserting it into existing wells, forcing more oil to the surface. However, the next phase of this project will seek to demonstrate a power plant with a negative carbon footprint.

Carbon dioxide captured using the Sargas unit will be fed to an algae photobioreactor. Algae need carbon dioxide to grow. The system can produce algae for pharmaceuticals, food, bio-plastics, biofuels and, at the end of the algae life cycle, even fertilizers.

This is a major new approach for carbon sequestration. The CO2 captured by the PFBC/Sargas system can be used to create soil amendments that power generators can sell (thus offsetting the cost of carbon capture technology) or that farmers could use (giving them a way to participate in and benefit from any CO2 cap-and-trade system developed by regulators).

Converting atmospheric carbon into terrestrial carbon converts it to its most stable form, where it can be sequestered for thousands of years.

By capturing the CO2 and storing or using it for soil amendments, the PFBC/Sargas technology provides an effective approach to addressing climate change concerns while meeting today's energy needs. PFBC/Sargas technology can be a critical support technology for renewable energy.
Sources such as wind and solar tend to be intermittent power sources, usually requiring a fossil backup system to ensure grid stability.

Traditional power plants can’t easily cycle up or down with the intermittent production from renewables. But the PFBC technology can, allowing it to compensate from power production swings in wind and solar generation.

For Pennsylvania, the project is especially important for another reason: PFBC technology can run on a variety of solid fuels, including wet waste coal. Enormous stores of energy are locked up in resources like waste coal, which is generated during coal processing and is generally disposed of in landfills.

Conventional coal-fired power plants can’t burn waste coal efficiently. PFBC technology makes it economical to convert waste coal into clean fuel. The waste coal can be obtained from current coal processing plants or can be mined from older, abandoned waste piles, thereby capturing the carbon in those piles and then reclaiming these old sites to a more acceptable state.

In addition, unlike conventional atmospheric boiler power plants, ash from the PFBC/Sargas power plant is environmentally friendly. With very low permeability and leaching characteristics, the ash can be used safely in concrete or other building products.