Petra Nova CCS Facility to Restart
The Japanese owners of Petra Nova CCS facility recently announced their plans to restart the facility later this year [2023]. Petra Nova Carbon Capture Facility is the largest post-combustion carbon capture facility built in Thompsons, southwest of Houston, Texas. Before Petra Nova, Boundary Dam project in Saskatchewan Canada was the first coal-fired power plant to use post-combustion capture, started its operations on October 2014. Its 110-MW retrofit captures 1 million metric tons of CO2 annually. Petra Nova started its operations in 2017 and captured 1.6 million metric tons of CO2 on an annual basis from 240 MW power production facility operated by NRG Energy Inc (NRG). It was approximately 33% of CO2 captured from one of its boilers. The 1-billion-dollar project received funding from department of energy (DOE) up to $190 million in total cost share with $167 million in financial assistance through the original Clean Coal Power Initiative (CCPI) Round 3 and additional $23 million in February 2016 under the Section 313 of the FY2016 Consolidated Appropriations Act.
The project used solvent based CO2 capture process. The captured CO2 was compressed and transported through an 80-mile pipeline to West Ranch Oil Field for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The oil field that was producing 300 bbls per day before CO2 injection enhanced the production to 15,000 bbls per day. On May 2020, The operator NRG services shutdown the plant due to low oil prices and COVID-19 related impact. The plant missed its capture target by 17% during its three-year life.
In an emailed response to questions, JX Nippon who took over ownership from NRG said that it anticipates restarting the Petra Nova facility after NRG Energy Inc. completes repairs on the coal-fired power unit feeding the CCS facility. The repair work is expected to be completed in June 2023. Petra Nova was a poster child to blame the economics and politics of CCS. With this good news, we hope we continue march towards NetZero 2050.
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