The facility, operated in partnership with Air Products and Chemicals, captures over 90% of the CO2 released by the company’s hydrogen plant that may otherwise go into the atmosphere.
Air Products’ vacuum swing adsorption project, supported through the DOE’s Industrial Carbon Capture and Storage (ICCS) program, is one of various ICCS projects advancing and deploying CCS technologies at commercial and utility-scale.
Construction of the facility was completed in March 2013.
Air Products uses the CO2 to help drillers to get hard-to-reach oil in the existing nearby fields for enhanced oil recovery.
The process stores the carbon dioxide permanently, and DOE estimates that it will lead to 60 million to 90 million additional barrels of oil being produced from Texas’s West Hastings Field.
The DOE principal deputy assistant secretary for fossil energy Chris Smith said to date, the department projects have helped to capture and securely store nearly 7.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions that otherwise would have been released into the atmosphere, helping to lay the groundwork for more widespread use of carbon sequestration.
"Next generation carbon capture technologies like those deployed at the Air Products facility are a crucial part of the President’s all-of-the-above energy approach, helping to ensure that we are powering our industries as efficiently, sustainably and cleanly as possible using all of America’s abundant energy resources," Smith added.
Image: Aerial view of Air Products’ existing steam methane reforming facility at Port Arthur, Texas, with new carbon-capture units and central co-gen and CO2 product compressor. Photo: Courtesy of Air Products and Chemicals Inc.
