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Carbon capture at Plant Yates marks significant milestone

Monday, Sept. 13, 2010 — Plant Yates has become the first Southern Company plant to capture carbon dioxide, a milestone that significantly advances the development of technology considered critical to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power generation.

The research accomplishment was achieved in early September at the Georgia Power plant near Newnan, Ga.

The pilot-scale project at Yates, which uses a system developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), will provide additional process improvements before the technology is demonstrated next year at a much larger 25-megawatt scale at Alabama Power's Plant Barry.

During the pilot at Yates, a small amount of carbon dioxide was captured, using a solvent that absorbs C02, and then returned to the plant's flue gas. At Plant Barry, the carbon dioxide will be compressed and transported via pipeline to deep underground storage formations.

Southern Company and MHI have been working over the past month on the research project at Yates, which is expected to continue through the middle of September.

"Capturing CO2 from an operating power plant is an important step forward in our efforts to develop effective and cost-efficient technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while ensuring a continued reliable and affordable supply of electricity for our customers," said Chris Hobson, chief environmental officer. "Along with our other carbon capture and storage research initiatives, our success here will help us move closer to the ultimate goal of commercial deployment."

Southern Company is a participant in several major research initiatives to advance the development of carbon capture and storage, a key component in the nation's effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition to the projects at Yates and Barry, Southern Company operates the National Carbon Capture Center for the U.S. Department of Energy, and Mississippi Power is building an advanced commercial-scale coal gasification power plant in Kemper County, Miss., that will include carbon capture and re-use. Other carbon capture and storage projects are under way or completed across the system.

Michael Ivie, an engineer in research and environmental affairs who is overseeing the Yates project, said the amount of carbon dioxide captured was small but the research significance was large. "First steps are sometimes the hardest," he said.

The test will help confirm MHI's emission-control design, Ivie explained. Coal-fired flue gas contains impurities such as sulfur trioxide that could impact carbon dioxide capture performance as well as increase costs associated with the process, and Yates Unit 1 has the unique ability to vary the levels of sulfur trioxide in the flue gas with a sulfur burner.

That and other findings at Plant Yates are important to the much larger-scale work next year at Plant Barry, Ivie said. The Barry test represents one of the industry's largest demonstrations of a start-to-finish power plant carbon capture and storage system.

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