Car­bon diox­ide now being cap­tured in first of its kind BECCS pilot

• The first car­bon diox­ide has been cap­tured using C‑Capture tech­no­logy at Drax Power Sta­tion in their innov­at­ive bioen­ergy car­bon cap­ture and stor­age (BECCS) pilot

• This moves Bri­tain fur­ther ahead in the race to devel­op BECCS tech­no­lo­gies – essen­tial in the fight against cli­mate change

• The pro­ject could enable Drax to become the world’s first neg­at­ive emis­sions power sta­tion – redu­cing harm­ful green­house gases accu­mu­lat­ing in the atmosphere

The demon­stra­tion plant at the power sta­tion, near Selby in North York­shire, is using innov­at­ive tech­no­logy, developed by Leeds-based C‑Capture, to cap­ture a tonne of CO2 a day, dur­ing the pilot. It is the first-time car­bon diox­ide has been cap­tured from the com­bus­tion of a 100% bio­mass feed­stock any­where in the world. If the BECCS pilot can be scaled up to deliv­er neg­at­ive emis­sions, Drax Power Sta­tion would be help­ing to remove the gases that cause glob­al warn­ing from the atmo­sphere at the same time as elec­tri­city is pro­duced. Engin­eers began com­mis­sion­ing the pilot plant in Novem­ber with the first car­bon now being cap­tured, prov­ing that the pro­pri­et­ary solvent developed by C‑Capture can be used to isol­ate the car­bon diox­ide from the flue gases released when bio­mass is used to gen­er­ate elec­tri­city. Data being obtained about the CO2 cap­ture pro­cess will con­tin­ue to be ana­lysed through­out the pilot to fully under­stand the poten­tial of the tech­no­logy and how it could be scaled up at Drax. Part of this will include identi­fy­ing and devel­op­ing ways to store and use the car­bon diox­ide being cap­tured. Drax has inves­ted £400,000 in the pilot, which could be the first of sev­er­al pro­jects under­taken at the power sta­tion to deliv­er a rap­id, lower cost demon­stra­tion of BECCS. ​“Prov­ing that this innov­at­ive car­bon cap­ture tech­no­logy works is an excit­ing devel­op­ment and anoth­er import­ant mile­stone in our BECCS pro­ject. Cli­mate change affects us all so this is of real sig­ni­fic­ance – not just for us at Drax, but also for the UK and the rest of the world. Will Gardiner, Drax Group CEO, said:
​“The suc­cess­ful deploy­ment of BECCS requires us to identi­fy ways in which the car­bon diox­ide we’re now cap­tur­ing can be stored or used in oth­er pro­cesses and we’re work­ing with the gov­ern­ment and oth­er busi­nesses on that. ​“We’re focused on work­ing togeth­er to make the pro­gress required for us to tackle cli­mate change and enable a zero car­bon, lower cost energy future.” The Roy­al Soci­ety and Roy­al Academy of Engin­eer­ing have estim­ated that BECCS could enable us to cap­ture 50 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide per year by 2050 – approx­im­ately half the nation’s emis­sions tar­get. The government’s Clean Growth Strategy iden­ti­fied BECCS as one of sev­er­al green­house gas remov­al tech­no­lo­gies that could remove emis­sions from the atmo­sphere and help achieve long term decar­bon­isa­tion. Min­is­ter for Energy and Clean Growth, Claire Perry, said:
​“This innov­at­ive tech­no­logy has the poten­tial to make huge strides in our efforts to tackle cli­mate change while kick-start­ing an entirely new cut­ting-edge industry in the UK. World-firsts like this will help us to real­ise our ambi­tion of hav­ing a first oper­a­tion­al plant by the mid-2020s as we con­tin­ue to seize the oppor­tun­it­ies of mov­ing to a green­er, clean­er eco­nomy – a key part of our mod­ern Indus­tri­al Strategy.” Chris Rayner, founder of C‑Capture and Pro­fess­or of Organ­ic Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­sity of Leeds, said:
​“This rep­res­ents a major mile­stone on the road to achiev­ing neg­at­ive emis­sions through BECCS, which is going to be so import­ant in the future. To see our tech­no­logy work­ing in a real envir­on­ment like Drax is a trib­ute to the fant­ast­ic team of chem­ists and engin­eers who work on the pro­ject.” Cas­par School­der­man, Dir­ect­or of Engin­eer­ing at C‑Capture added:
​“Work­ing at this scale is really where the engin­eer­ing gets inter­est­ing. The chal­lenge now is to get all the inform­a­tion we need to design and build a cap­ture plant 10,000 times big­ger. It’s only really when we get to those sorts of scales that we can start to have an impact on the cli­mate.” Drax Power Sta­tion became the largest decar­bon­isa­tion pro­ject in Europe by upgrad­ing two thirds of its gen­er­at­ing units to use bio­mass instead of coal. As part of the BECCS pilot, it will exam­ine options for a sim­il­ar re-pur­pos­ing of exist­ing infra­struc­ture to deliv­er more car­bon sav­ings. Work has already been under­taken to ensure the solvent C‑Capture has developed is com­pat­ible with the bio­mass flue gas at Drax Power Sta­tion. This was com­pleted last sum­mer along with a lab-scale study into the feas­ib­il­ity of re-util­ising the flue gas des­ul­phur­isa­tion (FGD) absorbers at the power sta­tion. FGD equip­ment is vital for redu­cing sul­phur emis­sions from coal, but it is no longer required to con­trol sul­phur on four of the gen­er­at­ing units at Drax that have been upgraded to use bio­mass, because the wood pel­lets used pro­duce min­im­al levels of sul­phur. C‑Capture is a spin-out from the School of Chem­istry at the Uni­ver­sity of Leeds, estab­lished through fund­ing from IP Group Plc. Source: Drax Group, press release, 7^th Feb­ru­ary 2019