MHI Awarded Concept Study of 3,400ton/day CO2 Recovery Facility
For Technology Qualification Program from Statoil, Norway-- One of World's Largest Recovery Plants for CHP Power Station --
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has been awarded by Statoil, an international energy company with headquarters in Norway, to undertake a concept study for a technology qualification program (TQP) for one of the world's largest carbon dioxide (CO2) capture facilities. The approximately 3,400 tons-per-day (tpd) CO2 recovery system is targeted for installation at a 280 megawatt (MW) gas-fired combined heat and power (CHP) plant at Mongstad, on Norway's west coast. MHI will vie against other companies in a competition encompassing CO2 capture technology, facility performance, and construction and operation costs, towards facility construction slated to commence in 2016.
The planned CO2 capture project is aimed at removing, capturing and compressing CO2 emitted from an existing natural-gas-fired CHP plant in operation since 2010 at an oil refinery operated by Statoil at Mongstad. The objective of the TQP is to evaluate the viability of various CO2 capture technologies for possible adoption at the facility.
MHI is one of several companies that were awarded verification testing of their technologies in June in the Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) phase. In the concept study, each company will create a plant design reflecting its test results. After the PCP, another round of bidding will take place in the final technology selection process. Results from the PCP phase may be used in prequalification for the next procurement phase.
Statoil, the largest enterprise of its kind in the Nordic region, comprehensively operates energy-related businesses spanning from oil and gas production and refining to sales.
MHI's CO2 recovery technology is known as the KM CDR Process. It uses the company's proprietary KS-1 solvent for CO2 absorption and desorption, which MHI and Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. developed jointly. MHI's technology results in considerably lower energy consumption than other processes, winning it high evaluations from the market for its performance. To date MHI has delivered ten commercial chemical plants for CO2 recovery from natural-gas-fired or heavy-oil-fired flue gas, and one other chemical plant is currently under construction, making MHI a leader in the industry.
The mechanisms have been firmly set in place enabling MHI to respond promptly to demand for large-scale carbon recovery systems. Earlier the company built the world's largest (500 tpd) CO2 recovery demonstration plant for coal-fired power generation at Southern Company's Plant Barry in the U.S. state of Alabama. MHI launched demonstration testing of the facility in June 2011 jointly with Southern Company, one of the largest electric utilities in the country, and demonstration testing of CO2 sequestration began this August. In Norway, in 2009 MHI completed the front-end engineering and design (FEED) for a 3,000 tpd CO2 recovery facility for a GTCC power plant.
Norway is highly environmental-minded and advanced in research on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). Through participation in a CCS-related project, MHI looks to establish the reliability of its own CO2 recovery technology, and it also considers the project at Mongstad important for promoting increased adoption of CCS in the battle against global warming. Through the competition, MHI aims not only to be awarded adoption of its technology for this project as a step in promoting expansion of its business in CCS; more broadly it also seeks to contribute to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gases.
Note: KM-CDR Process is a registered trademark of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., in Japan, the United States, the European Union (CTM), Norway, Australia and China.
