Commercially viable CCS

Swedish power company, Vattenfall, has joined Oxycoal UK, a project aimed at developing competitive Oxyfuel technology suitable for full-scale plant applications.

The Oxycoal UK project is developing the Oxyfuel technology for the capture of carbon dioxide.

The process involves burning coal in a mixture of high-purity oxygen and recycled gas to produce a gas rich in carbon dioxide.

The gas can then be purified and compressed for transportation and storage.

Göran Lindgren, CCS project manager, said: ‘Vattenfall has been working with development of CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) technology since 2001, and it is of great interest for us to become part of the Oxycoal UK project, one of the most advanced projects in Europe alongside our own Schwarze Pumpe pilot plant.'

The Oxycoal UK project is led by Doosan Babcock and run by a group of industrial sponsors and university partners.

The project, which is to receive £330,000 from Vattenfall, will run until November 2009.

Vattenfall's Oxyfuel pilot plant in Schwarze Pumpe was inaugurated in September 2008.

During 2008 Vattenfall also presented plans for new CCS demonstration plants in Denmark and Germany.

The aim is for the CCS technology to be commercially viable in 2020.