The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) announced on Tuesday that five electric utilities in the United States and Canada have joined the institute to host studies of the impacts of retrofitting advanced amine-based post-combustion CO₂ capture technology to existing coal-fired power plants. In addition to the five host site companies, 15 other companies and organizations, including six from Canada and one from Australia, have joined the project, EPRI said in a press release.

 The five host companies and sites include Edison Mission Group's 1,536-megawatt (MW) Powerton Station, operated by Midwest Generation, in Pekin, Ill.; Great River Energy's 1,100-MW Coal Creek Station in Underwood North Dakota; Nova Scotia Power's two 160-MW units at its Lingan Generating Station in Lingan, Nova Scotia; Intermountain Power Agency's 950-MW Intermountain Generation Station in Delta, Utah, and the 176-MW circulating fluidized bed boiler Unit 1 at FirstEnergy's Bay Shore Plant in Oregon, Ohio.

The institute noted that retrofit of post-combustion capture, or PCC, to an existing plant presents significant challenges, including limited space for new plant equipment, limited heat available for process integration, additional cooling water requirements and potential steam turbine modifications.

 "EPRI's analyses have shown carbon capture and storage will be an essential part of the solution if we are to achieve meaningful CO₂ emissions reductions at a cost that can be accommodated by our economy," said Bryan Hannegan, vice president of Generation and Environment at the institute. "Projects such as this, in which a number of utility companies come forward to offer their facilities and form a collaborative to share the costs of research, are critical to establishing real momentum for the technologies that we will need."

Each site offers a unique combination of unit sizes and ages, existing and planned emissions controls, fuel types, steam conditions, boilers, turbines, cooling systems, and options for CO₂ storage, the release said. The variety of data from the studies will provide the participants with valuable information applicable to their own individual power generating assets.

These five studies will be conducted in 2009 and a report for each site will:

Assess the most practical CO₂ capture efficiency configuration based on site constraints;

Determine the space required for the CO₂ capture technology and the interfaces with existing systems;

Estimate performance and costs for the PCC plant; and

Assess the features of each plant that materially affect the cost and feasibility of the retrofit.