With the exception of a few small “There’s keen interest in CO with
2
demonstration projects, all proposals for the attraction of it being produced by an
new coal plants that would capture and industrial source that would otherwise
sequester carbon dioxide (CO ) have been release it to the atmosphere,” said Fiorelli.
2
confinedtointegratedgasificationcombined He said that other benefits exist too, not
cycle (IGCC) plants. An announcement by the least of which is reduced severance taxes
Tenaska in February may change that. that Texas has to pay to use natural CO
2
The Omaha-based power project importedfromotherstates. developer has proposed building a large Construction work on Trailblazer could pulverized coal plant that would incorporate begin in 2009 and be completed in 2014. carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Tenaska has retained firms to conduct
The company is developing a site near preliminaryengineeringonthepowerplant
Sweetwater, Texas, where it hopes to build and work on aspects of the the facility’s the Trailblazer Energy Center—a $3 carboncaptureandstorage. billion, 600 MW supercritical coal plant “We assume there will be some sort able to capture up to 90 percent of the CO2 of federal climate legislation related to produced. The captured CO2 would be CO2 emissions,” said Fiorelli. That could injected into West Texas oil deposits to boost be some form of the Lieberman-Warner oil production from the Permian Basin. bill that would establish a carbon market
four power plants in Texas and owns and operates the Frontier plant near Bryan and the Gateway plant near Mt. Enterprise. A third plant, the Kiamichi Generating Station near Kiowa, Okla., also sends power to Texas. Among Tenaska’s other projects in development is a 630 MW IGCC plant in Taylorville, Ill.
“We have focused on doing something that is as easy to finance as possible,” said Fiorelli. That meant accessing what is viewed as the only established liquid market for CO2 in the United States for EOR in West Texas. Tenaska believes it will be able to get long-term CO2 off-take commitments under much more favorable terms than is possible anywhere else.
Trailblazer would use a supercritical pulverized coal boiler to make electricity and
Tenaska has filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for an air permit to build Trailblazer on a 1,900 acre tract in Nolan County. David Fiorelli, president and CEO of Tenaska’s business development group, said a final decision to proceed with the project will be made in 2009 based on a number of factors. They include the availability of local, state and federal incentives; final project cost estimates; and projected market prices for electricity and CO2. He said current estimates of these factors make the project appear to be economically feasible.
TENASKA TRAILBLAZER ENERGY CENTER
If built, Trailblazer could be the first major commercial coal-fired power plant to capture and provide storage of CO2, considered by many to be a greenhouse gas that contributes to global climate change. The captured CO2 would be transported via pipeline to nearby oil fields in the Permian Basin where it would be used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and stored in the basin’s geologic formations. EOR using CO has Flue gas desulfurization (FGD) Fabric filters
CO2 capture plant
Boiler
Steam
turbine/generator
S witchyard
CO2 compression station
Air cooled steam condenser
2 been used to increase oil production in West Texas for more than 30 years. The volume of CO2 expected to be sold to oil producers could help recover enough oil to add more than $1 billion a year of oil production to the Texas economy.
High oil prices have spurred the market for CO in the Permian Basin, causing
2
demand to outstrip supply. Essentially all
the CO currently used in West Texas is
2
provided by natural volcanic sources of
CO found underground in northern New
2
Mexico and southern Colorado. Natural CO is piped from those states to West
2
Texas. Demand has reached such a level that those CO supply regions have experienced
2
production declines.
and provide incentives for projects like Trailblazer. But whether a carbon bill passes during this Congress or in the next (which convenes next January), Tenaska chose not to wait. “We didn’t want to be saying ‘boy, we wish we had started working on a project like Trailblazer two years ago,’” said Fiorelli. “There’s an advantage in being one of the early movers, so we decided it was worth investing development dollars in a project that would be mature and ready to move quickly into financing and construction should such legislation pass.”
To date, the company has developed
a commercially available amine technology to capture carbon. “We think there’s quite a bit of advantage to using pulverized coal,” said Fiorelli. “With IGCC you have to pick a single gasifier supplier and spend north of $20 million before you find what it’s going to cost. You don’t have competition whereas with a supercritical boiler, you have a much better competitive situation.”
Another consideration for Tenaska was altitude. Higher elevations diminish power output. The relatively high altitude in West Texas (Sweetwater is 2,164 feet above sea level) affects IGCC efficiency, he said.
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