DOE issues $72M grant for CO2 capture research
Emissions

DOE issues $72M grant for CO2 capture research

PPL Corporation announced the company and its research partners were selected for a $72 million award negotiation by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) to help fund a carbon dioxide (CO2) capture research and development project expected to cost in excess of $100 million.

The research project and new carbon capture system – developed in partnership with the University of Kentucky and others – will be hosted at PPL subsidiaries Louisville Gas and Electric Company’s (LG&E) and Kentucky Utilities Company’s (KU) Cane Run 7 natural gas combined-cycle generating station in Louisville, Kentucky.

The new 20 MW research system planned for Cane Run is designed to capture a portion of the CO2 from the natural gas plant’s flue gas using a heat-integrated CO2 capture technology. The goal is to capture up to 240 tons of CO2 per day and up to 90,000 metric tons of CO2 per year. Current plans include a nearby manufacturer reusing and purifying the captured CO2.

In addition to the University of Kentucky, collaborators on the project include EPRI; Kentucky State University; Visage Energy; and American Welding & Gas. Vogt Power International Inc., a Babcock Power Inc. subsidiary, and Siemens Energy, manufacturers of the Cane Run 7 Generating Station, which are contributing technical support as part of the project team on integrating the new CO2 capture system. Koch Modular Process Systems and others will support the design, fabrication and construction of the carbon capture unit.

PPL subsidiaries LG&E and KU have partnered with the University of Kentucky for nearly two decades on various carbon capture research projects and were founders of the university’s carbon capture research program in 2006. Together with EPRI, the company and university deployed a pilot-scale carbon capture facility in 2014 at the KU E.W. Brown Generating Station.

The latest research initiative at Cane Run is one of more than 150 research and development projects that PPL is currently collaborating on with over 30 industry and academic partners, it said. Project goals range from accelerating low-carbon energy technologies to strengthening network resiliency.