Alstom CCS Projects and Technologies

Baochun MEI, Alstom China Policies and Government Affair Director,attended the 1st Guangdong International CCUS Expert Workshop and UK-China (Guangdong) CCUS Centre Launch Ceremony hold on December 18, 2013, making an introduction on Alstom CCS projects and technologies.

According to Mr. Mei, Alstom has three main activities: equipment &services for power generation; equipment & services for power transmission;equipment & services for rail transport. Alstom Clean Power Strategies arelowering environmental footprint; reducing cost of electricity and increasingflexibility and reliability.

CO₂ capture technologies pursued by Alstom mainly contain Post-combustion including Advanced Amines Process, Chilled Ammonia Process, Regenerative Calcium Cycle and Oxy-combustion including Oxy-combustion with ASU, Chemical Looping Combustion (CLC). These technologies are predicted to realize its commercial scale application in about 2020.

What’s important is that Alstom promote UK White Rose large scale Oxy-DemoProject with Drax Power Plant and BOC-Linde. The project will build aultra-supercritical 426MWe Gross Oxy-fuel Power Plant to generate clean power with the entire flue gas treated to capture 2 Million t/y CO₂. Recently,White Rose has gained 1 billion GBP funding from UK CCS competition.

Though CCS will be competitive vs. low carbon alternatives on costs, specific support is needed to stimulate commercial CCS market development: before reaching full commercial status, the technology first needs to be demonstrated at large-scale in real commercial conditions；a transport and storage infrastructure also needs to be developed；government policies and funding supporting are needed to develop proper suitable market framework for CCS.

Fossil-fuel power with CCS can remain a major factor of future low-carbon energy mix, and CCS Generation Technologies are ready for large-scale.However, the lack of funding and market support has restricted its application.China can play a key role in the development of the market. He gave his warmest congratulations to the establishment of UK-China (Guangdong) CCUS Centre, and said, Alstom is honored to support this Centre, and expecting win-win cooperation with Guangdong. (Linkschina)