Dive Brief:
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Toshiba has shipped the turbine that will be installed as part of the world’s first oxy-combustion supercritical carbon dioxide generation system that can capture and sequester CO2 (CCS).
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The 25 MW demonstration project, being built in La Porte, Texas, by NET Power LLC, will have the same generating efficiency as a combined-cycle plant, but with zero emissions.
- NET Power, a collaboration between Exelon Generation, CB&I, and 8 Rivers Capital, aims to have the demonstration project in operation in 2017 and then build a 300 MW commercial gas plant that uses supercritical CO2 by 2020.
Dive Insight:
Carbon capture technology has had its share of problems, but a new approach uses CO2 to help solve the problem.
The Department of Energy last month awarded $80 million for a 10 MW, six-year pilot project that uses supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) in gas turbines to enhance efficiency.
And another group, NET Power, has already broken ground on a demonstration project in Texas that will demonstrate an Allam cycle plant that operates at high efficiency and collects high-pressure CO2.
The system burns natural gas with oxygen, as opposed to air, but then mixes it with high pressure, high temperature (700°C) supercritical CO2, which is heated to 1,100°C and is the working fluid in the turbine. The exhaust heat from the turbine is used to heat CO2 going into the combustor while the spent CO2 is captured at high purity and under high pressure and ready to be piped.
NET Power envisions selling the CO2 for enhanced oil recovery.
The cost of the whole system is about $1,000/kW, about the same as a state of the art combined-cycle plant, says NET Power spokesperson Walker Dimmig.
NET Power’s goal, says Dimmig, is “to make CCS cost effective with an emitting combined cycle plant.”
Correction: A previous version of this article said the demonstration plant offers comparable output and efficiency to a combined cycle plant, but that is incorrect. The article also stated the plant was 250 MW, but that is also incorrect.