US DOE funding 12 new carbon capture projects

Calpine Deer Park Energy Center. Image courtesy Calpine.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $45 million in funding for 12 projects to advance point-source carbon capture and storage technologies. These projects aim to capture at least 95% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated from natural gas power and industrial facilities that produce commodities like cement and steel.

These 12 projects were selected by DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) and fit under three areas of interest: (1) carbon capture research and development, (2) engineering-scale testing of carbon capture technologies and (3) engineering design studies for carbon capture systems. DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) will manage the selected projects:

• Sustainable Energy Solutions, Inc. (Orem, UT) will design, build and operate a carbon capture process that will scale the system capacity to 30 tonnes of CO2 per day for the first time and demonstrate CO2 capture of more than 95% from the flue gas stream. This project will be housed at the Eagle Materials/Central Plains Cement Sugar Creek Plant in Sugar Creek, Missouri. Award amount: $4,999,875.
• University of Kentucky Research Foundation (Lexington, KY) will test an innovative CO2 capture system with four new transformative techniques, treating evolved gas from an electric arc furnace. This project will be housed at Nucor Steel Gallatin Plant, in Ghent, Kentucky. Award amount: $4,999,965.
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) (Champaign, IL) will implement an engineering design study for retrofitting an existing cement manufacturing facility, Holcim’s Ste. Genevieve Cement Plant in Bloomsdale, Missouri, using CO2 capture technology with the ability to achieve 95% capture from flue gas. Award amount: $3,999,585.
• Wood Environmental & Infrastructure Solutions (Blue Bell, PA) will complete an engineering design study for CO2 capture for the commercially-operated Shell Chemicals Complex in Deer Park, Texas, that will reduce its CO2 emissions by 95% using a post-combustion technology to capture CO2 from several plants, including an on-site natural gas combined heat and power plant. Award amount: $4,000,000.
• Calpine Texas CCUS Holdings, LLC (Houston, TX) will conduct an engineering design study on a commercial-scale, second-generation carbon capture system to capture 95% of total CO2 emissions from the natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) co-generation facility, Calpine Deer Park Energy Center, in Deer Park, Texas, and applying a technology previously tested at commercial scale for CO2 capture from coal flue gas streams. Award amount: $4,791,966.
• General Electric Company, GE Research (Niskayuna, NY) will develop a design to capture 95% of CO2 from NGCC flue gas with the potential to reduce electricity costs by at least 15%. Award amount: $1,499,992.
• SRI International (Menlo Park, CA) will design, build and test a technology that can capture CO2 at 95% or better efficiency to demonstrate progress toward a 20% cost reduction compared with current performance of an NGCC plant with carbon capture. Award amount: $1,499,759.
• CORMETECH, Inc. (Charlotte, NC) will further develop, optimize and test a new, lower cost technology to capture CO2 from NGCC plant flue gas, which will enhance scalability to large NGCC plants. Award amount: $2,500,000.
• TDA Research, Inc. (Wheat Ridge, CO) will build and test a transformational post-combustion capture process using simulated NGCC flue gas that will demonstrate improved performance while meeting DOE capture targets. Award amount: $2,500,000.
• University of Kentucky Research Foundation (Lexington, KY) will address technical challenges from low CO2 and high oxygen concentrations in NGCC flue gas, along with a high CO2 capture efficiency, through a process resulting in negative CO2 emissions and lower costs. Award amount: $2,452,268.
• ION Clean Energy (Boulder, CO) will perform an engineering design study for a carbon capture system that will be retrofitted onto the existing Calpine Delta Energy Center (DEC), in Pittsburg, California, to capture 95% of the CO2 emissions for geologic storage in the nearby Sacramento Basin. Award amount: $5,811,210.
• GE Gas Power (Schenectady, NY) will complete an engineering design study to incorporate a 95% commercial carbon capture solution into an existing NGCC site that will provide advanced operability, lower costs and high efficiency, and will also be scalable to other commercial sites. Award amount: $5,771,670.

A detailed list of the selected projects and their associated areas of interest can be found here.