E.ON and Siemens put pilot CO2 capture plant for coal-fired power plants into operation at Staudinger power plant

22 September 2009

Germany’s E.ON and Siemens are putting a pilot CO2 capture plant into operation at the E.ON power plant Staudinger in Grosskrotzenburg near Hanau, Germany.

The two companies are thus pushing further ahead with the development of a process geared toward climate-friendly coal-based power generation. A lab-proven process is to be employed under real operating conditions at the power plant’s hard-coal-fired Staudinger Unit 5.

The pilot plant will be operated with part of the flue gas from Unit 5. E.ON and Siemens intend to run the pilot plant until the end of 2010. The results achieved and the operating performance of the pilot plant will serve as the basis for large-scale demonstration plants, which are scheduled to start operation in the middle of the next decade.

Michael Suess, CEO of the Fossil Power Generation Division of Siemens Energy said, ‘The challenge is to attain a significant reduction in the CO2 emissions associated with the combustion of fossil fuels. In this context CO2 capture and storage technologies will be of decisive importance.

‘These technologies are available but they have to be tested for deployment in large plants, developed further and brought to market readiness. The pilot plant in the Staudinger power plant will bring us a decisive step forward here,’ added Suess.

The project is being sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Economics under the terms of the COORETEC Initiative. It is part of the federal government’s fifth Energy Research Programme ‘Innovation and New Energy Technologies’ and promotes research and development in the field of low-CO2 power plant technologies.

The technology for CO2 capture from the flue gas of power plants is part of the Siemens environmental portfolio with which the company earned revenues of nearly €19bn in fiscal 2008.

E.ON is an investor-owned power and gas company. The company generated just under €87bn in sales in 2008 across the 30 countries it operates in.

Copyright © 2009 NewNet

Tags: carbon capture

This story was published on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Europe, companies, energy storage. You can follow any responses to article entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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