Imperial College Win Award for Impurity Removal in CO2 Waste Streams from Coal-Fired Power Plants

A team led by Air Products and including Imperial College London and Doosan Babcock Energy Ltd. were presented the Rushlight Carbon Capture and Storage Award 2008 for work addressing impurity removal in carbon dioxide (CO₂) waste streams from coal-fired power plants.

CO₂ purification is an essential requirement for the compression, transport and potential sequestration of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The Rushlight Awards promote and celebrate the leading environmental technologies and innovations by organizations throughout the UK and Ireland. The award, received in a London ceremony in late January, was presented by Professor Gordon MacKerron of the University of Sussex.

We are very proud to have received this award on behalf of the project team. It is a true recognition that technology can play an important part in making carbon capture and storage a real option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and is an important and practical approach to the issue of CO₂ purification. It also rewards technology that demonstrates novel advancement and shows evidence of progress in energy efficiency,” said Ian Brass, Air Products’ marketing manager for Tonnage Gases in Europe, Middle-East & Africa, who accepted the award at the event.

Air Products is currently working on a number of carbon capture and storage demonstration projects across the world. Air Products’ oxyfuel technology can reduce the cost of capturing CO₂ for the power industry. The company has specifically focused on the purification of the resulting oxyfuel combustion flue gas, developing a robust process for the efficient removal of trace impurities. Air Products' proprietary sour compression technology uses a staged compression process to optimize pressure, hold-up and residence time, allowing removal of impurities during the compression process. This technology can allow cost savings in the oxyfuel combustion process and minimizes the content of these components in the sequestered CO₂.

Air Products' oxyfuel sour compression technology has been demonstrated in experimental work carried out by Imperial College London with actual flue gas from a 160kW coal-fired rig at Doosan Babcock in Renfrew, Scotland, as part of the Oxycoal-UK Project. Air Products has also announced another CO₂ capture study for gasification in collaboration with the Alberta Energy Research Institute. The study, focused on advanced carbon dioxide capture technology for use with gasification, is entitled “Advanced Hydrogen and CO₂ Capture Technology for Sour Syngas” and is expected to be completed by October 2010.