NRG gets USD154m US funding for CCS project

Thu Mar 11 2010, 10:40 AM

The US Department of Energy (DoE) is awarding up to USD154m to NRG Energy to support the development of a post-combustion carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Texas. The project is being selected as part of the third round of the DoE’s Clean Coal Power Initiative, which aims to bring together the federal government and private industry to demonstrate CCS technologies at coal-fired power plants. The DoE funding will be matched by investment from NRG.

The firm plans to build a 60MW demonstration facility a unit of an existing plant in Thompsons. The facility will use Fluor’s Econamine FG Plus SM carbon capture technology and a carbon dioxide compression systems developed by Ramgen. Over the six-year life of the project, the firm will also integrate a highly efficient cogeneration system into the unit. The captured carbon dioxide will be used in enhanced oil recovery in a Gulf Coast oilfield near the plant. The project aims to demonstrate that the application of post-combustion CCS to existing plants can be economically viable.