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Drax joins talks over carbon capture and storage project
THE owner of Britain's biggest coal-fired power station has embarked on feasibility studies into the use of carbon capture and storage after joining talks with the regional development agency to help develop its £2bn carbon cluster project.
Yorkshire Forward wants to create a network of major industrial CO2 emitters in East Yorkshire which would use CCS technology to capture harmful emissions.
These would be transported eastwards and offshore via a pipeline or ship and stored safely under the seabed of the North Sea.
Drax said it believes that oxyfuel combustion – key to the CCS process – can be applied to the power station and started scoping work in the fourth quarter last year.
Peter Emery, production director, said the Selby plant "could dovetail into the Humber cluster system".
He added: "The Humber cluster is credible and Drax needs to be in a position to capitalise on that."
The FTSE-250 company said last year that it had no plans to pilot CCS, but added that it would consider incorporating technology once it has become proven and economic.
The Humber cluster sits around a corridor parallel to the M62 and includes Drax, Eggborough, Ferrybridge, Killingholme, Immingham and Keadby power stations and Scunthorpe steel works.
The pipeline would stretch from Ferrybridge, at the junction of the M62 and the A1, to Theddlethorpe, on the south bank of the Humber, where it would be taken to depleted oil and gas fields or large deep saline aquifers.
CO2 Sense Yorkshire, a business development company owned by Yorkshire Forward, said the technology for the project is proven.
A briefing note said: "Instead of being released into the atmosphere, CO2 is captured and compressed. The compressed CO2 is pumped through a network of pipelines, some new and some formerly used for natural gas, to a suitable well previously used for gas extraction.
"The CO2 is pumped down through the well into impermeable porous rock which previously held gas deep beneath the sea bed.
"The CO2 filters into the porous sandstone reservoir filling the tiny spaces which once held natural gas. It is trapped from escaping by layers of solid impermeable rock above, just as the gas was trapped for millions of years."
The single-source emitters in the Humber cluster spew out 60 million tonnes of CO2 a year, equivalent to half the emissions from UK households.
According to CO2 Sense Yorkshire, the 2bn network would be able to transport 60m tonnes per year to storage locations by 2030. The transport costs would be 1-2 per tonne of CO2, it added.
Drax, which is the UK's largest CO2 emitter, hosted a meeting on Friday with the CBI and Yorkshire Forward to discuss the plans.
Mr Emery said: "If we can prove this on a large scale in Humber it would certainly be a very helpful pointer for others and would be a new industry that would benefit the area."
In the next decade, he said Drax would likely be generating power using "some combination" of CCS and biomass.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Wednesday 23 May 2012
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