Teaming up with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Southern Co. brought on line a 25-megawatt, coal-fired carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) facility on a patch of river-side land that is home to the James M. Barry Electric Generating Plant, one of the largest in Southern Co.’s portfolio.

What carbon capture technology is the facility using? 

Southern Company teamed up with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries which, together, we are responsible for the CO₂ capture plant design and operation. This facility utilizes the KM CDR Process, a capture technology which was developed jointly by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and The Kansai Electric Power Co.

The first step, of course, is coal combustion, which generates electricity and gives off a flue gas. A share of the flue gas from the main coal power plant is piped to the CCS facility. There, as part of the KM CDR process, the flue gas reacts with KS-1, an amine solvent, which captures the CO₂. This creates a flow of CO₂ that can then be separated from the KS-1, compressed and sent to a sequestration off site.

What made the Barry plant the site of choice?

Barry was chosen on the basis of the facility’s size and status as a flagship site among Southern Co.’s fleet. The main facility here – the James M. Barry Electric Generating Plant – is home to seven generating units, powered by coal and natural gas, with a total nameplate generating capacity of 2,657 megawatts. The CCS plant takes a slipstream of the existing plant’s flue gas, equivalent to about 25 megawatts out of the total 700-megawatt gas flow.

What volume of CO₂ are you capturing?

The facility is designed to capture about 500 metric tons per day, pulling about 90 per cent of the CO₂ out of the inbound flue gas slipstream. Annually, it will operate with the capacity to capture 150,000 tons to 200,000 tons of CO₂.

How is the CO₂  being handled?  

Pipeline construction is underway to pump the CO₂ to a site about 12 miles away.  Beginning this autumn, the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership will transport the captured CO₂ through a pipeline to the Citronelle Oil Field, which is operated by Denbury Resources.

There the CO₂ will be injected 9,500 feet into a deep saline geologic formation. The CO₂ is being injected into an oil-drilling region but it is not being used for enhanced oil recovery. The CO₂ is being sequestered in a formation about 3,000 feet above the deeper oil deposits, where it will remain permanently stored.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), along with its program participants -Denbury Resources, Electric Power Research Institute and Southern States Energy Board – are managing the design and operation of the pipeline and injection system.

What’s next for Southern Co.’s CCS strategy? 

The goal at first Southern Co. is developing options to reduce emissions and meet potential regulatory requirements. We want to look at technologies of the future as an option to do this.  In addition to the Barry CCS project, the company is also:

• Managing the DOE National Carbon Capture Center in Alabama, where we’re testing the next generation of technologies to capture carbon dioxide emissions.
• Building a commercial-scale, 582-MW generating plant in Kemper County, Mississipi, using local lignite and the company’s Transport Integrated Gasification (TRIG) technology, with 65 per cent carbon capture and re-use.
• Drilling wells to assess geologic suitability for carbon storage at other power Southern Co. power plants
• Partnering with universities to train the next generation of CCS engineers and to advance the industry’s geologic testing capabilities.

Other resources: For more information on Mitsushishi’s KM CDR process, which is described as less energy-intensive than other CO₂ capture technologies, see this introduction. Mitsubishi is rolling out the process at a variety of other facilities globally which are listed here.

Check out the original story here:
http://www.globalccsinstitute.com/community/blogs/authors/adamaston/2011/07/06/firing-first-world%E2%80%99s-first-coal-fired-ccs-plant-five-qu