Hazelwood Carbon Capture Project

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A post-combustion capture plant is operating at International Power’s Hazelwood Power Station. The solvent capture plant began operation in 2009 and is capturing and chemically sequestering CO2 at a nominal rate of 10,000 tpa of CO2. This project is partly funded by the Australian Government under LETDF and the Victorian Government under ETIS LSDP.

Facts:

The Hazelwood CO2CRC PCC Project is a brown coal drying and a post-combustion CO2 capture and storage project at the International Power’s Hazelwood facility. The project aims to initially cut CO2 emissions by 30 per cent at a retrofitted 200 MW brown coal unit at Hazelwood.

The CO2 capture in the order of 10,000 ton per year will be based on ammonia absorption technology. CO2 will be utilized for ash water treatment (neutralizing alkaline) and be sequestered into calcium carbonate. Excess CO2 will be processed for industrial gas markets. CO2CRC will use the plant to test a range of solvent and process changes and using two other rigs, will test adsorbent and membrane post- combustion techniques.

The solvent capture plant began operation in 2009 at a nominal capture rate at 10,000 ton/year.

Project partners are International Power, Loy Yang Power, CO2CRC, CSIRO and the Process Group.

The total project cost is A$ 369 million. The Australian Government is contributing A$50 million through the LETDF and the Victorian Government an additional A$30 million.

Latrobe Valley Post Combustion Capture Project (LVPCC)

The ETIS Brown Coal R&D program is one a several components to the overall ETIS program which includes support for renewables, large scale demonstration of low emissions technologies and enabling R&D. The LVPCC is a collaboration by Loy Yang Power, International Power, CSIRO and CO2CRC to create a multisite, multi-technology post combustion capture (PCC) hub to identify CCS options for the Victorian brown coal generators.

The broad aims of the project are:
- Identification of cost-effective options for reduction of CO2-emissions in Victorian brown coal fired power stations, both retrofit and new build
- Focus on post-combustion capture of CO2
- Determine effects of CO2-concentration, moisture content, SOx, NOx and fly-ash on sorbent systems and novel separation technologies
- Technical and economical assessment based on results from pilots and laboratory research

The project is based at two generation sites, Loy Yang A, operated by Loy Yang Power and Hazelwood operated by International Power and continues till June 2010. This project comprises the Hazelwood Carbon Capture Project and Loy Yang Post-Combustion project.