RWE IGCC Plant with CO2 Storage

Facts:

As early as April 2006 RWE announced its plans for the development of a CCS demonstration plant in Germany. As announced in 2008, RWE is planning to construct an IGCC lignite fuelled power plant at the Goldenbergwerk location in Hürth, nearby Cologne in North Rhine Westphalia. Since the location is well connected to open cast mines, raw lignite will be the fuel of this power plant. To reduce the water content pre drying will be applied to bring down the moisture content to 12%. The power plant is expected to have a gross output of 450 MW, with an efficiency of 36% and integrate CO2 capture. Capture rates are expected to be about 92% or 100g/Kwhnet.If successfully implemented, the plant will be scaled up to produce 1000 MW.

RWE is planning to operate the plant by 2014 and was initially planning to invest some € 1 billion in this project. Today, the costs of the project have risen to € 2 billion. By choosing an IGCC technology, RWE is building up on its experience with this technology from the early 1990s. In order to cater for CO2 separation, processing is adjusted.

The power plant development will be accompanied by the development of a storage project. RWE plans to store some 2.6 millions ton of CO2 annually, amounting to a total of 104 Mt and is currently investigating different locations in the North of Germany for adequate storage capacities. Currently three different regions in Northern Germany are under investigation, which are Nordfriesland, Ostholstein and offshore storage outside the 12 mile zone of Northern Germany. In March 2008, RWE started the exploration phase with site screening, consisting of regional and feasibility studies of the reservoirs. If permission is granted, seismic studies will be undertaken in 2009.

The storage project which is coordinated by RWE Dea, is accompanied by the research project COAST, which provides the accompanying R&D for clarification and assuring of standards and methods for commercial scale CO2 storage in deep saline aquifers.

To connect source and sink, RWE is planning to build a pipeline of about 530 km from North Rheine Westphalia to Schleswig Holstein. The liquefied CO2 will be under the pressure of 200 bar directly transported to the storage site. Currently this project is in the regional planning procedure. According to RWE end of 2009 will be an important milestone for the IGCC CCS demonstration project until which decisive internal and external project fundamentals will have to be established. However, just as Vattenfall, RWE is facing problems regarding storage sites in Schleswig Holstein and receiving the required permissions might prove to be difficult.

Timeline: