The Boundary Dam Unit 3 carbon capture and storage project in Saskatchewan was online all but four days in June, operator SaskPower reported this week in a monthly update. “The facility needed to be taken down on separate occasions due to issues with the chemistry of the capture process,” the update explains.
The amine used in the plant’s capture process was affected by heat and coal particulates, according to SaskPower. “This meant the amine and the complex chemistry behind it needed to be analyzed and fixes identified,” the update says. A permanent fix for the problem has not been found, but is being worked on.
Issues with accumulation, or slagging, in the plant’s boiler, also resulted in the plant being taken offline shortly. “This means no flue gas was being sent to the capture facility at that time,” according to the update.
Regardless, the plant was only offline for four days and captured, at its peak for the month, 2,617 metric tons of CO2 per day. So far this year the plant has captured 411,800 metric of CO2, enough to keep it on track to meet the company’s goal of capturing 800,000 tonnes by the end of the year.
In 2014, the plant captured 115,000 metric tons of CO2 from October, when it was brought online, to the end of the year. In 2015, the facility captured 425,000 metric tons of CO2.
The plant’s CO2 capture rate for June was just shy of the company’s 65 percent target, coming in at 64 percent.
SaskPower on Thursday welcomed Canada’s minister of natural resources, Jim Carr, to tour the plant. “[E]very province is doing what it can to meet its own climate goals, investing — with a lot of others, including the government of Canada — in those technologies that will take us to where we want to be,” Carr was quoted saying in the Regina Leader Post.
