German engineering firm Siemens and E.ON Kraftwerke have announced that they will build a pilot CO2 capture plant 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-compatible 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 is scheduled to start operation in the summer of 2009.
With the post-combustion capture process developed by Siemens, CO2 is removed from the power plant’s flue gas using special cleaning agents before the cleaned gases are discharged to atmosphere via the plant’s stack.
In the pilot plant the cleaning agent’s long-term chemical stability and the efficiency of the process will be put to the test under real power plant conditions. In parallel, the technology will be further optimized in terms of energy consumption.
The pilot plant will be operated with part of the flue gas from Unit 5. E.ON Kraftwerke and Siemens intend to run the pilot plant on the site of the Staudinger power plant until the end of 2010.
