BOC boards 2Co Energy's carbon capture project
18 Jun 2012
London – Gases and engineering company BOC is to take a 15% stake in 2Co Energy Ltd’s development of the UK’s flagship Don Valley CCS (carbon capture and storage) power project in south Yorkshire.
Under the deal, BOC and its parent company Linde are to supply the carbon capture technology and air separation units (ASUs) for the CCS plant, which will be built at Stainforth in the Humber Gateway. Earlier this year, Samsung C&T agreed to take a 15% equity stake in the power project.
Initially, BOC will work with 2Co Energy’s other contractors to complete the project’s revised FEED study. Linde Engineering will construct the twin ASUs which will produce the oxygen needed for the coal gasification process, and the carbon capture process will use Linde’s Rectisol technology.
The ASUs will have the biggest air separation capacity in Europe, each producing around 3,000 tonnes of oxygen a day. BOC will also provide operations and maintenance services for the ASUs.
“BOC and Linde Group are leading players in gases and clean energy technologies and will bring world-class engineering and operations expertise to the project,” said Lewis Gillies, chief executive, 2Co Energy.
“[Their] involvement further underpins the financial and technical integrity of the UK’s leading CCS project following Samsung’s landmark investment earlier this year,” he added.
Don Valley is claimed to be one of the most advanced and cost-competitive CCS projects in Europe. The 650MW project is expected to help fill the gap left by the imminent retirement of existing coal and ageing nuclear power plants.
The project aims to anchor a ‘cluster’ of additional CCS projects in the Humber Gateway region. The Yorkshire-Humber region has long been a centre for the UK’s coal-fired power generation and contributes around 18% (90mt CO2/yr) of the UK’s annual CO2 emissions.
2Co Energy’s coal-fired power plant will capture at least 90% of its carbon emissions as carbon dioxide from the outset. The
end-to-end project plans to create thousands of UK jobs over the next five years.
