Vattenfall to build CCS demonstration plant in Germany

Swedish energy generator and distributor Vattenfall plans a demonstration plant for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology at a power plant near the village of Janschwalde, in the state of Brandenburg, Germany.

The approximately one billion euro investment is to consist of one 500 MW block of a six block conventional lignite plant with two CCS equipped boilers; one boiler is to be newly built with Vattenfall's own award-winning Oxyfuel technology, and the other boiler will be retrofitted with its post-combustion technology.

“Fossil fuels can be high-tech, and do have a great future,” said Tuomo Hatakka, CEO of Vattenfall Europe.

The company also plans to inaugurate a first pilot plant for CO2-separation at the Schwarze Pumpe power station in the state of Brandenburg this summer.

This pilot will have an installed capacity of 30 MW (thermal) and aims to optimize Vattenfall's Oxyfuel process, which the company said it has successfully tested on a laboratory scale.

Vattenfall is investing about 70 million euros to build the pilot plant.

The company, owned by the Kingdom of Sweden, said it will compensate the loss of efficiency in the generation process, incurred by the installation of additional components, by developing "methods for increasing efficiency and operational excellence."

To store the captured CO2, Vattenfall said it is also cooperating with the state-controlled utility Gaz de France Production and Exploration GmbH to test storing in a depleted natural gas field in Altmark.

Vattenfall initiated CCS concept research in 2001, with the goal of developing commercial concepts for power plants by 2020.

Many private companies and governments around the world are pursuing carbon capture and storage (for instance, see TransAlta, Alstom to develop CCS project in Alberta, StatoilHydro, ONGC to look at carbon capture and storage, UK launches carbon capture and storage project and NRG, Powerspan to demo large scale carbon capture.)

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