American Electric Power is one of the frontrunners in the field of carbon capture and sequestration, according to AEP spokesperson Phillip Moye.

AEP relies on coal to fuel approximately 66 percent of its installed generating capacity. Because AEP is one of the largest consumers of coal in the western hemisphere, the company also is one of the largest sources of CO2 emissions

In 2009, the first fully integrated carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS) technology validation project began operation at AEP’s Mountaineer Plant in West Virginia. The latest project AEP and its partners are pursuing is a new that will demonstrate those technologies at commercial scale.

Sites for carbon sequestration must follow certain criteria. There must be porous rock, with a layer of non-permeable rock on top of the layer of permeable rock.

The Mountaineer Plant CCS projects employ Alstom’s patented chilled ammonia process for post-combustion CO2 capture. The process uses ammonium carbonate to absorb CO2. The resulting ammonium bicarbonate is converted back to ammonium carbonate in a regenerator and is reused to repeat the process. The flue gas, cleaned of CO2, flows back to the stack and the captured CO2 is sent for storage.

This project is part of a controlled progression of activities to verify technology and manage risk along the road to commercialization of post-combustion CCS technology. Other previous activities included a DOE-funded site characterization study at Mountaineer Plant in the 2002 – 2003 timeframe to determine the suitability of the local geology for underground CO2 storage.

The process stores carbon in porous rock 7,000 under the surface. That rock absorbs the carbon, which is then released in the solid non-porous rock.

The Mountaineer Plant had the right type of ground to make it ideal for carbon capture, Moye said.

The U.S. Department of Energy has been awarded AEP funding for 50 percent of the cost of the project, up to $334 million, of building a commercial-scale CCS installation at Mountaineer. The project, operational in 2015, will capture and store approximately 1.5 million metric tons of CO2 per year. It is intended to remove up to 90 percent of the CO2 from a 235 MWe portion of the power plant’s flue gas.