Jun 17 2010
Air Products (NYSE: APD) announced today it has been selected to receive $253 million in Phase 2 funding from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) under the Industrial Carbon Capture and Sequestration (ICCS) Program for its ICCS project in Port Arthur, Texas.
The funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act-funded ICCS Program will be used for final engineering, design, construction and operation of the project through September 2015.
Air Products’ project was the only industrial gas company-led undertaking selected by DOE. The project is one of three to receive Phase 2 funding from the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, and to advance from the initial 12-project Phase 1 selections announced last October. DOE is funding 66 percent of the approximate $384 million project.
Air Products will design, construct and operate a state-of-the-art system to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from its two steam methane reformers (SMR) located within the Valero Refinery in Port Arthur. The SMRs produce hydrogen to assist in the making of cleaner burning transportation fuels by refinery customers on Air Products’ Gulf Coast hydrogen pipeline network. The recovered and purified CO2 would then be transported by Denbury Green Pipeline-Texas, LLC for use in enhanced oil recovery. The CO2 removal units will be designed by Air Products and use technology to be retrofitted to each SMR unit. Approximately one million tons of CO2 annually will be recovered, purified and delivered via the pipeline for injection into Denbury Onshore’s enhanced oil recovery projects in Texas.
“Air Products has been an integral team member of several carbon capture demonstration projects around the world. We believe the capabilities of our technology and experience were key factors in gaining DOE funding to make this project possible. With the Phase 2 selection in place, we are preparing to move forward with this important project and look forward to achieving the sustainability gains the project has to offer,” said Wilbur Mok, vice president, North America Tonnage Gases for Air Products.
DOE said in its Phase 2 selection announcement that successful development of advanced technologies and innovative concepts reducing CO2 atmospheric emissions is a key objective of the Obama Administration’s efforts to help mitigate the effects of climate change. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) – which includes technologies for capturing, transporting, and permanently storing carbon dioxide emissions in geological formations – is viewed by many experts as an important part of a portfolio strategy for confronting the challenge. The projects announced today are aimed at testing large-scale industrial carbon capture and storage, an important step in moving CCS technology toward eventual commercial deployment.
Air Products is currently working on several CCS demonstration projects around the world for the power market. These projects include:
- The world’s first full demonstration of oxyfuel carbon capture and sequestration with Vattenfall AB, one of Europe’s leading energy companies. Air Products is installing its proprietary CO2 capture, purification and compression system at Vattenfall’s research and development facility in Schwarze Pumpe, Germany, which is viewed globally as the preeminent CO2 oxyfuel project. Air Products’ pilot plant is to be operational in 2010.
- In cooperation with DOE, a 2010 project to design and construct a CO2 purification system in support of an oxyfuel technology development project at a boiler simulation facility in Windsor, Connecticut.
- In collaboration with the Alberta Energy Research Institute, a 2010 study focusing on advanced CO2 capture technology for use with gasification.
- Air Products demonstrated oxyfuel sour compression technology in experimental work (2008) carried out by Imperial College London with flue gas from a 160 kilowatt coal-fired combustion installation at Doosan Babcock’s facility in Renfrew, Scotland, as part of the Oxycoal-UK Project.
Additionally, a team led by Air Products and including Imperial College London and Doosan Babcock Energy Ltd. was presented the Rushlight Carbon Capture and Storage Award 2008 for work addressing impurity removal in CO2 waste streams from coal-fired power plants. The Rushlight Awards promote and celebrate the leading environmental technologies and innovations by organizations throughout the UK and Ireland.
Source: http://www.airproducts.com/