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.

Petra Nova W.A. Parish Fact Sheet: Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage Project

Company/Alliance: Petra Nova Holdings: a 50/50 partnership between NRG Energy and JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corp.

Location: Unit 8, W.A. Parish plant, Thompsons, 60KM from Houston, Texas, USA

Feedstock: Coal

Size: 240 MW slip stream from 610 MW unit.

Capture: 1.4 Mt of CO2 captured annually (90% capture)

Capture Technology: Post-combustion: KM-CDR amine scrubbing CO2 developed by MHI and KEPCO

CO2 Fate: 82 mile pipeline for onshore EOR in Hilcorp's West Ranch Oil Field in Jackson County, Texas

Timing: Project is scheduled to start at the end of 2016

Motivation/Economics:

The total project cost is estimated to cost $1 billion.

NRG received $167 million from the DOE Clean Coal Project Initiative (CCPI) March 10 2010.

The project partners NRG and JX Nippon are contributing $300m each as equity investment for the project.

Japan Bank for International Cooperation and Mizuho Bank (backed by Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (NEXI)) are providing loans of $250 million.

Comments:

The Petra Nova CCS project will use the KM-CDR Process developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and the Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) . The technology uses a proprietary amine solvent called KS-1, which is specially formulated for low cost and low energy-consuming CO2 absorption and desorption.

In September 2009 NRG announced that it will use Fluor Corporation's Econamine FG Plus capture technology and test Fluor's Piperazine solvent. NRG was previously going to use Powerspan's ECO2 capture technology on the pilot scale project. The NRG Energy's W.A. Parish plant is one of the US's worst CO2 pollutants. This project will decrease the emission of pollutants of CO2 by 90% as well as SOx, NOx, mercury and particulate emissions.

Front end engineering design (FEED) was started in 2010 and is nearing completion. An air permit application was filled in September 2011.

NRG Energy was initially pursuing smaller-scale plans at the Parish plant, looking at capturing around 375,000 tons per annum of CO2. The project was expanded to its current form to accommodate the need for larger volumes of CO2 for EOR operations at mature oil fields in the Gulf Coast region. The first site to use CO2 from the WA Parish Project is Hilcorp's West Ranch Oil Field. Through EOR, it is expected that oil production will be boosted from around 500 barrels per day to approximately 15,000 barrels per day. This field is currently estimated to hold approximately 60 million barrels of oil recoverable from EOR operations.

Project Link: NRG Project Webpage

Presentation on W.A. Parish at 2010 NETL CO2 capture technology meeting [PDF] (September 2010)

Other Sources and Press Releases:

Low oil prices cloud futures of clean coal and carbon capture (August 2015)
Commercial start eyed for late 2016 on Texas carbon capture project (Aug 2015)
Odessa coal-to-gas power plant to break ground this year (April 2015)
NRG, JX Nippon, Hilcorp Team Up to Develop Post-Combustion Carbon-Capture Facility (September 2014)
Carbon Capture and Sequestration: Research, Development, and Demonstration at the U.S. Department of Energy (June 2013)
NRG Energy web site
Fluor web site
US DOE W.A. Parish Post-Combustion CO2 Capture and Sequestration Project Draft EIS summary (September 2012)
NRG Energy to add 75-MW plant in Texas, plans more additions (August 2012)
NRG seeks DOE money for CCS test (September 2009)
Press release - NRG to test CO2 capture (November 2007)