Clean coal trial hoped to help lower power station carbon emissions

Extract from ABC News

By William Rollo

Posted yesterday at 2:40pm

 

Photo: A two year trial at Australia's first carbon capture plant is about to come to an end. (ABC News: William Rollo)

Map: Biloela 4715

Carbon emissions from coal-fired power stations are a major contributor to global warming, but the mining industry says so-called clean coal technology could be the silver bullet to address the issue.

A group of Queensland engineers say they have made a major step forward in the field with the successful trial of Australia's first carbon capture plant, located on the outskirts of Biloela in central Queensland.
The Callide Oxyfuel Project is one of just a few low-emission coal projects in the world, and demonstrates how carbon capture technology can be retrofitted to existing power stations.
The technique has been on trial at CS Energy's Callide A coal-fired power station at Biloela, in a project worth $245 million.
The power station was originally constructed in 1965, then refurbished and recommissioned in 1998.
For the past two years, the 30-megawatt plant has generated enough power for around 30,000 homes while most of its carbon emissions have been captured.
Project director Chris Spero said air pollution in the area had consequently fallen by more than 85 per cent.
This month the demonstration wraps up, with results to be analysed in the hope of applying the technology to future projects.
"When you burn coal you produce waste gases. Normally these waste gases go up the chimney stack into the atmosphere," Mr Spero said.

 

Photo: Callide Oxyfuel Project Director Chris Spero says the project is the largest of its time in the world. (ABC News: William Rollo)

"We've got a process now to burn the coal differently in a different way. It's called oxy-fuel combustion and that concentrates the CO2 in the waste gas.
"We then process the waste gas to extract the carbon dioxide."
He said engineers wanted to scale the technology up and eventually fit it to a much larger commercial power plant.
"This project has been the largest of this type in the world, but it's only 30 megawatts," he said.
"So where we need to be is getting to the next scale up, which is about 150 megawatts, and then ultimately to full commercial scale which is 500 to 700 megawatts.
"Over the next 12 months, our principal objective will be to consolidate what we've learnt from here, capture that into technical manuals and commercialisation agreements and try to get the technology into the marketplace."
The project has received support from the Australian and Japanese governments.

Too little too late, environmental group says

Julien Vincent from the environmental group MarketForces said the idea of clean coal was like trying to make healthy cigarettes.
He said coal had little future and it was cheaper to make low-emission power with solar and wind generators.
"The notion of clean coal or the emergence of capturing carbon from power stations and storing it underground really has had its day," he said.
"The reason we would develop carbon capture technology is because of the rapid and urgent need to de-carbonise and we need all the realistic options on the table to reduce emissions.
"I think we need to recognise that some are in and some are out, and carbon capture and storage is clearly not going to work."

However with 40 per cent of the world's electricity still being generated in coal-fired power stations, Mr Spero and his team argued the Callide Oxyfuel project would play an important role in the fight against climate change.