Isra-Mart srl:Siemens hails break out success for carbon capture pilot

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Isra-Mart srl news:

Siemens has successfully completed the testing of a post-combustion Carbon Capture Storage (CSS) technique that is capable of capturing up to 90 per cent of carbon emissions.

The German engineering giant confirmed on Friday that it has completed a pilot project for its so-called PostCap process at E.ON's Staudinger coal-fired power plant in Germany. It said that the trial resulted in "practically zero solvent emissions", while maintaining a CO2 capture efficiency of at least 90 per cent.

The PostCap technique uses a non-volatile salt-based solution to separate carbon dioxide (CO2) from flue gas emissions.

Siemens claims it achieves efficiency losses that are two per cent lower than alternative monoethanolamine-based carbon capture techniques.

Additionally the company also said that the salts do not require high temperatures to achieve CO2 capture, meaning less energy is consumed in the process.

"Amino acid salts are ideal CO2 capture agents," said project manager Tobias Jockenhövel on Siemens' website. "CO2 scrubbing with amino acid salts consumes less energy than other CCS techniques. We were able to lower our energy requirement from four gigajoules to 2.7 GJ per ton of CO2, which led to a significant cost reduction."

A spokeswoman for Siemens told BusinessGreen.com that the project engineers will keep trying to improve the efficiency and solvent emissions of the PostCap process. However, she added that the Staudinger project marks a major milestone on the path to building large demonstration-scale CCS plants.

Siemens is hoping that by 2012 it will have deployed an up-scaled version of the technology that will be 20 times larger than the Staudinger project at Tampa Electric's Big Bend coal-fired plant in Florida.

The Staudinger project is sponsored by E.ON and the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology as part of an initiative designed to boost development of low-carbon power plant technologies in Germany.

The Big Bend project is funded by a similar programme in the US run by the Department of Energy.

Post-combustion CCS is arguably the most advanced form of CCS and is seen as particularly viable option for fossil fuel energy generators looking to retrofit carbon capture systems to existing plants.

Advocates of CCS argue it is essential if emissions from coal dependent economies such as the US, China and Australia are to be reduced.

However the technology is yet to be successfully demonstrated at large scale power plants, and critics maintain that there are concerns about the high cost of CCS and the risks associated with the stored carbon leaking back into the atmosphere.