As of September 30, 2016, the Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies program at MIT has closed. The website is being kept online as a reference but will not be updated.

Buggenum Fact Sheet: Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage Project

Company/Alliance: Vattenfall, Nuon

Location: Willem-Alexander Power Plant, Buggenum, Netherlands

Feedstock: Coal and biomass

Size: 20 MW slip stream from 253 MW plant

Capture Technology: Pre-combustion IGCC- 90% CO2 capture

CO2 Fate: As there is no suitable reservoir in the vicinity of Buggenum, the CO2 released from the capture solvent is compressed and mixed together with the hydrogen-rich stream emerging from the top of the absorber. It is then fed back to the power plant to the syngas line and then to the gas turbine.

Timing: Construction 2009; Start January 2011. Officially opened May 2011. Completed March 2013

Scale Up: New Power plant Magnum at Eemshaven. This project has been cancelled.

Motivation/Economics:

Project cost is estimated to be about 40 million euros. The project is supported by the Dutch government with 20 million euros and Vattenfall is applying for EU support in the NER300 scheme. It has also received EU $10 million of funding from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Comments:

Nuon/Vattenfall decided to demonstrate and optimize the pre-combustion CO2 capture concept at a small scale first before full-scale commercial application at the Magnum plant could be considered. This resulted in the the pilot project at Buggenum which is also called the "CO2 Catch-up" project in 2008.

The pilot plant operated between January 2011 and March 2013 for 5886 hours with a cumulative amount of CO2 captured of 4478 tons. The project operated without major problems and the overall pilot plant performance met expectations.

The Buggenum plant has been operating as an IGCC power plant since 2001. The project used a slipstream of the product gas, corresponding to about 20 MW capacity. The process includes all steps such as reformer, water-shift converter, desulfurization and capture unit. It will produce liquid CO2 which in the pilot project will be vented.

The larger scale Magnum power plant was postponed in 2011 until atleast 2020 due to a Dutch ban on onshore storage and rising coal prices. It is presumed that this project is on hold.

Project Link: Vattenfall's Buggenum Project website

Technical Papers:

Damen, T K, R Faber, R Gnutek, HAJ van Dijk, C Trapp, L Valenz, Performance and Modelling of the Pre-combustion Capture Pilot Plant at the Buggenum IGCC, Energy Procedia, Vol 63, pp 6207-6214, (2014). <Link to PDF>

Other Sources and Press Release:

Vattenfall officially opens Buggenum (May 2011)
Nuon commences CCS plant (February 2011)
The next stage for Nuon's Buggenum (May 2010)
Vattenfall making progress on pilot plant carbon capture (February 2010)
Nuon starts construction of CO2 capture test at Buggenum (April 2009)