Air Products, SIEG to Conduct Study on Oxyfuel CO2 Purification Technology

Air Products (NYSE: APD) today announced an agreement with Shanxi International Energy Group Co., Ltd (SIEG) to perform a feasibility study and reference plant design on its proprietary oxyfuel carbon dioxide (CO₂) purification technology for potential installation at SIEG’s 350 MW Oxyfuel Electrical Generation Demonstration Project.

The demonstration project, to be located at SIEG’s power plant in Taiyuan, Shanxi, intends to purify CO₂emissions for capture for other application use or sequestration. The U.S. Department of Energy and China National Energy Administration have agreed to include this project in the U.S.-China Fossil Energy Protocol – Annex II: Clean Fuels, which is designed to promote scientific and technological cooperation between countries.

“We are honored that SIEG selected Air Products and our technology for this study and pre-plant design. We have demonstrated at smaller scale that oxyfuel technology can successfully purify CO₂for capture. A project this large, being world scale at 350 MW, is the next logical step for the technology,” said David J. Taylor, vice president – Energy Businesses at Air Products. Taylor added under the agreement that Air Products’ study and plant design will provide SIEG detail for both oxygen production and CO₂ purification needs, and both plants will be world scale size.

Purification has been discussed as a critical component to successfully sequestering carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from industrial and power generation processes. Air Products’ technology is designed to purify the CO₂ by targeting removal of up to 95 percent of the impurities in the waste gas including sulfur oxides (SO_X), hydrogen chloride, and nitrogen oxides (NO_X). These acidic impurities must be removed from the CO₂ stream to remove corrosive elements before the purified CO₂ is transported for use or potential sequestration.

The company has specifically focused on purification of the resulting oxyfuel combustion flue gas, developing a robust process for efficient removal of trace impurities. Air Products' proprietary sour compression technology uses a staged compression process to optimize pressure, hold-up, and residence time to allow removal of impurities during compression. This provides cost savings in the oxyfuel combustion process and minimizes these components in the sequestered CO₂.