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.

Aberthaw Fact Sheet: Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage Project

Company/Alliance: RWE nPower and Cansolv

Location: Aberthaw Power Station, Wales

Feedstock: Coal

Size: 3 MW slip stream from 1.5 GW power station (50 T/day)

Capture Technology: Post combustion

CO2 Fate: N/A

Timing: Start (January 13, 2013) Finish (May 2014)

Motivation/Economics:

£8.4million.

Scale-up: Demonstration plant >25MW at Tilbury or Blyth power station. Cost of £50million. This did not go ahead.

Comments:

Over the past few years, RWE has been increasing its reliance on gas and renewables and it is expected that Aberthaw will be the last of RWE nPower’s current fleet operating on coal by the end of the year.

RWE nPower expects the Aberthaw plant to help it optimize CCS technology and provide an insight into reducing emissions from coal power stations and the viability of running a full-scale carbon capture facility in conjunction with normal power plant operations.

RWE nPower operated a 1 Tons/day demo plant at Didcot Combustion Test Facility. This project was commissioned in 2008 and used a generic amine capture. The plan was to operate Aberthaw for 2 years before possibly increasing the pilot to a demonstration plant capturing 4000 Tons/ day.

Project Link: RWE Carbon dioxide Capture web page

Other Sources and Press Release:
Aberthaw completes (May 2014)
Aberthaw CCS pilot kicks off (January 2013)
RWE nPower hails first tonne of carbon captured at Wales plant (January 2013)
How ready is ‘capture ready’? - Preparing the UK power sector for carbon capture and storage Dr Nils Markusson Professor Stuart Haszeldine (May 2008)