China and Australia sign 'clean coal' agreement - steps to carbon-negative bioenergy

In what they see as an important step towards a 'cleaner' coal future, Australia and China signed a formal international agreement for joint research into carbon capture from coal plants. The agreement, between CSIRO and China’s Thermal Power Research Institute (TPRI), will see TPRI install, commission and operate a post-combustion capture pilot plant at the Huaneng Beijing Co-Generation Power Plant as part of CSIRO’s research program. The agreement formalises an earlier partnership (previous post).

Biopact tracks carbon capture developments, because the technology can be applied to biomass power plants to yield "negative emissions" energy, that is, bioenergy which actively removes CO2 from the atmosphere. The logic is: if the coal industry, especially in China, is putting money into developing carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies anyways, then we would rather see those being applied to renewable biomass from the start as this results in the most radical tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Post-combustion capture (PCC) is a process that uses amines to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from power station flue gases and is a technology that can potentially reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing and future coal-fired power stations by more than 85 per cent. If coupled to biomass power plants, energy with negative emissions as large as -1000 tons CO2/GWh can be achieved (that is: for each GWh of electricity generating it takes a large amount of CO2 from the past out of the atmosphere).

Benefits of PCC include:

• PCC can be retrofitted to existing plants and is a very prospective means of substantially reducing their greenhouse gas intensity
• PCC can be integrated into new plants to achieve a range of greenhouse gas intensity reductions down to near zero emissions
• in contrast to competing technologies, PCC has high operational flexibility (partial retrofit, zero to full capture operation) and can match market conditions for both existing and new power stations- for instance, during periods of high power prices, PCC can be turned off and maximum power delivered to the market
• PCC offers a lower technology risk compared to competing technologies - this is further enhanced by the ability for staged implementation, which is not possible with competing technologies
• renewable technologies can be integrated in the PCC process - in particular, PCC allows low-cost solar thermal collectors to provide the necessary heat to separate CO2 from sorbents, effectively reducing the loss of electrical output due to capture
• PCC can be applied to capture CO2 from natural gas fired power stations and other large stationary sources of CO2, including biomass power plants, smelters, cement kilns and steelworks.

The Sino-Australian pilot plant is designed to capture 3,000 tonnes per annum of CO2 from the power station and begins the process of adapting this technology to evaluate its effectiveness in Chinese conditions. CSIRO’s involvement in this PCC project has been made possible through funding from the Australian Government. The Australian Government is supporting this work through a $A12 (€7.2/US$11.1) million grant, $A4 (€2.4/US$3.7) million of which supports this work in China:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: carbon capture and storage :: post-combustion capture :: bio-energy with carbon storage :: carbon-negative :: negative emissions :: bio-energy with carbon storage :: climate change :: Australia :: China ::

Director of CSIRO’s 'Energy Transformed National Research Flagship', Dr John Wright, said low emission energy generation was a key research area for the Flagship and he welcomes the support of the Australian Government.

This project is part of a major research program to identify ways to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector. Climate change is a critical issue for Australia and internationally, and we’re delighted to be working with TPRI to help find solutions to this global challenge. - Dr Wright

The project will focus on assessing the performance of an amine-based PCC pilot plant under Chinese conditions. It will allow PCC technology to be progressed in the Chinese energy sector which will have a much greater impact than operating in Australia alone.

The Chinese partners are aiming for the Beijing pilot plant to be up and running before August this year.

The installation of the PCC pilot plant in Beijing is a CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship research project and forms part of the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate initiative (APP). The APP program for PCC also includes a pilot plant installation at Delta Electricity’s Munmorah power station on the NSW Central Coast, with an additional Australian site currently under negotiation.

The Energy Transformed National Research Flagship is also undertaking PCC research outside the scope of the APP program with a $A5.6 million project in the Latrobe Valley, which focuses on brown coal.

References:
CSIRO: Clean coal agreement with China - March 6, 2008.

CSIRO: Post combustion capture (PCC) - Fact Sheet.

Biopact: Australia and China partner to develop carbon capture and storage technologies - September 07, 2007