The United States Department of Energy said Tuesday it has partnered with Natural Resources Canada to open a new 1-megawatt thermal (MWth) pilot plant to test oxy-fired pressurized fluidized bed combustion (oxy-PFBC) carbon capture. “This project is a major step forward for CCUS,” Douglas Hollett, principal deputy energy assistant secretary for fossil energy, said in a DOE release. “It also highlights the importance of the long-standing U.S.-Canadian collaboration on clean energy technology development.”
Oxy-PFBC is an improved oxy-fuel combustion process by which CO2 is concentrated before the combustion of fuel in the turbine, “thereby greatly reducing the cost of capturing the CO2,” and increasing the efficiency of the process, according to the release.
DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory will manage the project, which will be led by the Gas Technology Institute, partnering with the Linde Group, the Electric Power Research Institute, Alstom Power, and Alberta Innovates.
The facility will be located in Ottawa and it funded in part by a $13 million award under the DOES’s Office of Fossil Energy’s advance combustion program. It is hoped that should the project prove successful, the oxy-PFBC process will be brought to commercial scale.
“Canada and the United States share a bold vision for our continent: a vision based on collaboration, and one that secures North America’s place as one of the world’s most dynamic energy regions. We will continue to work together to meet our climate change objectives, increase competitiveness and support employment opportunities,” Kim Rudd, parliamentary secretary to the Canadian minister of natural resources, said in the release.
