TITLE

Long-Term Demonstration of CO₂ Recovery from the Flue Gas of a Coal-fired Power Station
(Joint Program to Promote Technological Development with the Private Sectors)

AUTHOR

RITE-Yokohama-West Laboratory and RITE-Hiroshima-West Laboratory in Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI)

SOURCE

ABSTRACT

Prices of petroleum and natural gas are increasing due to the concern that they will run short of supply in the near future. On the other hand, coal is relatively inexpensive and stably available over the long term. In fact, coal-fired power generation is expected to become the main way of thermal power generation in the future.

However, there is a problem that coal-fired power plant releases abundant CO2. So, CO2 recovery and sequestration for coal-fired power plant are essential countermeasure against global warming.

Working in cooperation with Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc., MHI has developed a CO2 recovery plant with high energy saving performance using the flue gas from natural-gas-fired boilers and gas turbines. This new facility has been delivered and operated in plants for commercial applications such as chemical use, dry ice manufacture, and so on. The flue gas of coal-fired boilers includes SOx, dust, and other impurities not normally present in natural gas. Demonstration is required to investigate the effect of these impurities on CO2 recovery plant.

In this experimental research, our laboratory constructed a demonstration plant of 10ton/day CO2 capacity in a coal-fired power station in Matsushima Japan with cooperation from J-POWER Co., Ltd. The following subjects have been confirmed by long-term demonstration.
･ Monitoring the operation situation
･ Understanding the influence of dust, SOx, NOx Cl and F.
･ Understanding solvent loss

Demonstration operation for 4000 hours was performed with this test plant at a coal-fired power station in Matsushima Japan and almost all of our original targets were achieved. We also clarified the behaviors of dust, SOx, and NOx in the equipment systems and how those components influence the solvent. Moreover, we confirmed that appropriate pretreatment enables stable operation of absorption and regeneration process in CO2 recovery from the flue gas of a coal-fired boiler.