Petra Nova, the only commercially-operational, large-scale project in the U.S. to capture carbon dioxide from a power plant and pump it underground, has been restarted, according to JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corp.
The Petra Nova CCS project is designed to capture approximately 90 percent of the CO2 from a 240 MW slipstream of flue gas from a coal-fired unit at the W.A. Parish Generating Station near Thompsons, Texas. The captured CO2 is injected into an oil field to increase crude oil production.
The $1 billion project was partially funded by a $195 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
Petra Nova operated for three years and used Mitsubishi’s KM CDR Process and KS-1 amine solvent, jointly developed by Mitsubishi and Kansai Electric Power Co., for CO2 absorption and desorption.
Petra Nova closed in May 2020, when low oil prices made using the gas to recharge a nearby oil field unprofitable.
JX Nippon, a Japanese energy company, bought NRG’s share of Petra Nova in 2022 and is now the sole owner. The project officially restarted Sept. 5, JX Nippon said.
According to a 2020 U.S. DOE technical report, the facility captured 92.4% of the CO2 from the slip stream of flue gas processed in the three-year period starting in December 2016. But the system failed to meet an 85% capacity factor goal because of technical problems and downtime. The facility captured 3.8 million short tons of carbon dioxide during its first three years, shy of the 4.6 million short tons developers had expected.
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