A Houston-area carbon capture facility, one of the world’s largest and the only one affixed to a power plant in the U.S., has a second life after being shut down for more than three years.
The Petra Nova carbon capture facility, at NRG’s WA Parish Plant 35 miles southwest of Houston, restarted operations this month, its owner JX Nippon said in a statement.
The project was seen as a major test of commercial-scale carbon capture technology when it began in late 2016, but suffered numerous outages in its three-and-half years of operations before going offline in 2020 because of tumbling oil prices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Petra Nova is one of only three utility-scale carbon capture and storage facilities worldwide that is attached to a power plant; the others are in China and Canada, according to E&E News.
JX Nippon, a Japanese oil and gas company, said it continues to consider carbon capture, utilization and storage as an effective means to achieve carbon neutrality. The company is a subsidiary of ENEOS, Japan’s largest oil company.
“We believe that JX Nippon’s accumulated knowledge and technology in this field, including through the Petra Nova CCUS project, is crucial to achieving ENEOS group’s commitment to ‘the realization of a carbon neutral society,’” JX Nippon said in a Sept. 13 statement announcing the restart.
PETRA NOVA WOES: The Petra Nova carbon capture plant is being revived. Can it live up to its promise?
Petra Nova was originally a joint venture between Houston-based energy company NRG and JX Nippon. The carbon capture facility is attached to Unit 8 at the WA Parish coal-fired power plant owned by NRG in Richmond.
The 600-megawatt coal plant came back online Aug. 21, according to NRG spokesperson Ann Duhon, providing a boost in electricity supply to the Texas power grid before the upcoming winter. Unit 8 was previously closed after being damaged by a fire in May 2022.
The Petra Nova carbon capture facility restarted operations Sept. 5, according to JX Nippon. JX Nippon previously said it planned to restart Petra Nova as soon as Unit 8 came back online and produced a steady supply of carbon dioxide.
Petra Nova works by piping in the coal-fired Unit 8’s emissions, also known as flue gas. This flue gas goes through an absorption process in which a solvent captures 90% of the carbon dioxide. A regenerator strips the carbon dioxide from the solvent. This process is energy-intensive and requires a dedicated natural gas unit, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The remaining emissions, primarily nitrogen, are vented to the atmosphere. The recovered carbon dioxide is piped 81 miles southwest to the West Ranch oil field, where it is injected into the ground to sequester the carbon dioxide and increase oil production.
CARBON CAPTURE: What you need to know about carbon capture, and how companies plan to use it
Petra Nova is now capable of sequestering 1.4 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to JX Nippon’s statement.
The project was conceived in 2010, after the Department of Energy said it would give NRG and JX Nippon $190 million in grant funding and $250 million in low-interest loans to build it. The project started in December 2016 and ultimately cost more than $1 billion.
Its goal was to sequester 3.2 million tons of carbon dioxide in its first two years, but reached just 2.3 million tons. It ultimately sequestered more than 3.9 million tons of carbon dioxide from 2017 to 2020.
Petra Nova was mothballed in 2020 after demand for crude tumbled during the pandemic, weakening Petra Nova’s usefulness in enhanced oil recovery.
NRG sold its stake in Petra Nova to JX Nippon in Sept. 2022, making the Japanese company the sole owner of the facility.
CONTROVERSIAL TECH: Carbon capture may fuel Houston’s future, but are oil companies using for cover?
Advocates say that carbon capture technology, though still a nascent industry, is crucial to keeping the planet from warming dangerously. The Biden Administration has given billions of dollars to direct-air capture and other carbon capture projects, with many landing in the Houston and along the Gulf Coast. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act also upped the tax credit for carbon capture technologies, making the technology more economically viable.
Critics, however, worry carbon capture will be used by oil-and-gas companies to extend the use of fossil fuels. Others take issue…
Read More: Petra Nova carbon capture facility restarts after three-year shutdown