SaskPower’s carbon capture and storage facility is at the Boundary Dam power station near Estevan, Saskatchewan in Canada received the award.
One of the project’s aims, or at least positive flow-on effect, is to make a technical, environmental and economic case for the continued use of coal.
Power Engineering said this year’s project winners reflected the industry’s search for cleaner, more efficient sources of power generation and demonstrate new technologies that will help achieve those goals.
To be eligible for an award, a project must have been commissioned between August 1, 2013 and July 31, 2014 and have made a “significant impact” on the entire energy industry.
SaskPower’s project transformed the aging Unit 3 at Boundary Dam Power Station near Estevan into a reliable, long-term producer of 110 megawatts of base load electricity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by one million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually – the equivalent of taking more than 250,000 cars off Saskatchewan roads annually.
The captured carbon dioxide will be transported by pipeline to nearby oil fields in southern Saskatchewan where it will be used for enhanced oil recovery.
The project will generate up to 3200 tonnes a day of carbon dioxide for use in Cenovus’s enhanced oil recovery project at Weyburn. The CCS plant will also provide carbon dioxide for SaskPower’s Aquistore project, which is studying long-term geological storage of carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide not used for enhanced oil recovery will be stored in the Aquistore project, an independent research and monitoring project which will demonstrate that storing carbon dioxide deep underground is a safe, workable solution to reduce GHG emissions.
The geological storage of carbon dioxide will take place 3.4km deep in a layer of brine-filled sandstone called the Deadwood Formation. Aquistore is administered by the Petroleum Technology Research Centre, which will manage the carbon dioxide monitoring and storage.
Aquistore is the PTRC’s second world-class flagship project, following the IEAGHG Weyburn-Midale carbon dioxide monitoring and storage project.
In addition to carbon dioxide, the Boundary Dam project will capture sulphur dioxide, convert it to sulphuric acid and sell it for industrial use. Fly ash, a by-product of coal combustion, will also be sold for use in ready-mix concrete, pre-cast structures and concrete products.
The award citation said the Boundary Dam integrated CCS project would capture up to 90% of carbon dioxide emissions and store them permanently underground.
“The Boundary Dam CCS system will allow Unit 3 to continue operations by producing 140t of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour, and will allow for the continued use of coal in the province of Saskatchewan,” the citation said.
Mike Monea, president of integrated carbon capture and storage initiatives for SaskPower, said the project had already won awards from the Canadian Electricity Association, the North Dakota-based Lignite Energy Council and American Clean Energy Institute in San Diego, as well as prompting invitations to speak about the project at conferences in six countries.
Monea estimated that over 1000 people from over 20 countries had toured the project site.
“Our Boundary Dam [project] is quite popular in the world,’’ Monea said.
The project made SaskPower a “world leader” in CCS in terms of coal-fired electricity generation.
“It is the world’s first. Nobody else has done it,” he said.
