NRG secures stimulus funding to build carbon capture demonstration unit

Published: 10-Mar-2010

NRG Energy, Inc has been selected by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) to receive up to $154 million, including funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to build a post-combustion carbon capture demonstration unit at NRG’s WA Parish plant southwest of Houston.

The proposed project was submitted under the Clean Coal Power Initiative Program (CCPI), a cost-shared collaboration between the federal government and private industry to demonstrate low-emission carbon capture and storage technologies in advanced coal-based, power generation. The goal of CCPI is to accelerate the readiness of advanced coal technologies for commercial deployment, ensuring that the United States has clean, reliable, and affordable electricity and power.

Scheduled to begin operating in 2013, NRG’s carbon capture demonstration project at WA Parish will be among the first of its kind. It will use Fluor Corporation’s advanced Econamine FG Plussm technology to process flue gas from the plant equal in quantity to that of a 60 megawatt unit. It will be designed to capture 90% of incoming CO2 or approximately 400,000 metric tons of CO2 annually—levels that can further advance the technology’s viability on a larger scale. Once captured, the CO2 will be compressed and used in enhanced oilfield recovery operations.

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