Aiming to find ‘the sweet spot’ for carbon capture technology

As one of the earliest adopters of carbon capture and storage, Saskatchewan is doing a big share of the heavy lifting needed to turn CCS into a commercially viable tool in the fight against global climate change.

The world’s first commercialscale CCS project began to operate at SaskPower’s Boundary Dam in 2014, more than a decade after the technology was proposed as a method to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial emissions caused by burning fossil fuels.

The provincially owned utility refurbished one of six coal-fired steam boiler units and added amine-scrubber technology to capture and divert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

“CCS is a win for our customers, the environment and the provincial economy,” says Howard Matthews, SaskPower’s vice-president of production.

It’s hoped that retrofitting more coal-fired power plants with CCS will ensure low and predictable electricity prices and help industrial customers meet their carbon reduction goals, Matthews says.

Perfecting carbon capture and storage could also save Saskatchewan’s huge thermal coal resource from redundancy, protect 650 mining jobs and help to secure base load electricity to backstop renewable energy capacity. It also would boost provincial oil royalties through the use of recovered liquid CO2 in enhanced oil recovery by Cenovus Energy Inc. at Weyburn and Midale.

Matthews says that SaskPower remains committed to realizing CCS’s potential, in spite of some early operational issues.

Rapid amine degradation during the first 12 months of operation reduced total CO2 recoveries to the point that SaskPower was forced to pay a $12-million penalty to Cenovus for missed deliveries of liquid CO2. But Matthews says a new activated carbon technology largely resolved the problem.

In 2016, its second full year of operation, the plant recovered about 800,000 tonnes of CO2, versus its design capacity of one million tonnes. But, he says, SaskPower’s focus has now shifted away from merely maximizing carbon capture.

“We’re aiming to find the sweet spot between operating cost and CO2 production,” he says.

In June, a scheduled boiler shutdown will enable SaskPower to install extra heat exchangers that will eliminate the need to shut down the CCS plant when heat exchangers need cleaning.

Matthews notes that 40 per cent of the world’s electric power comes from coal, so there’s a vast need for carbon reduction and a huge potential market for CCS technology.

“There’s so much energy stored in coal and there’s so much potential for companies that can develop this technology,” he says.

SaskPower continues research and development work at its Carbon Capture Test Facility at the Shand coal-fired plant near Estevan. Ideas from Shand were instrumental in improving CO2 recoveries at Boundary Dam.

And the utility’s CCS Knowledge Centre in Regina is sharing the lessons learned at Boundary Dam and Shand in order to stimulate global CCS deployment and technology advancement.

Global mining giant BHP Billiton of Melbourne, Australia, has agreed to contribute $20 million over five years to enhance access to SaskPower’s CCS data.

Meanwhile, Matthews says, the utility is negotiating with the Canadian government to amend federal regulations on coal-fired power plants that require conversion to CCS or shutdown by Dec. 31, 2019. SaskPower hopes to gain additional time for installing new CCS units.