Air Products inks deals with Valero, Denbury for carbon capture project in Texas
US industrial gases major Air Products has signed agreements with Valero Energy and Denbury Onshore to proceed with a planned carbon capture and sequestration project in Port Arthur, Texas.
The carbon dioxide (CO2) to be captured by Air Products will be delivered via a pipeline owned by Denbury Green Pipeline-Texas to Denbury Onshore beginning in late 2012. The CO2 will be used by Denbury Onshore in enhanced oil recovery operations, officials said.
"The signing of these agreements is a key step in moving this important project forward,” said Wilbur Mok, vice president of North America tonnage gases for Air Products. “Air Products has been an integral team member of several carbon capture projects around the world. We are a technology solutions provider and at Port Arthur we will have the opportunity to demonstrate these capabilities at a large industrial scale.”
Air Products will design, construct and operate a state-of-the-art system to capture CO2 from its two steam methane reformers (SMR) located within the Valero refinery in Port Arthur, it said.
The CO2 removal technology will be retrofitted to the SMRs, which produce hydrogen to assist in the making of cleaner-burning transportation fuels by refinery customers on Air Products' Gulf coast hydrogen pipeline network.
Approximately 1mn tons/year (tpy) of CO2 will be recovered, purified by Air Products, and delivered via the pipeline, the company said.
In June 2010, Air Products announced it was selected to receive $253mn in Phase 2 funding from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) through the National Energy Technology Laboratory under the Industrial Carbon Capture and Sequestration (ICCS) Program for this ICCS project.
It has since received an additional $30 million from DOE for the project.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds are being used for final engineering, design, construction and project operation through September 2015. Air Products' project was the only industrial gas company led undertaking selected by DOE and one of only three projects receiving Phase 2 funds.
DOE is providing a total of $284mn, including the funding utilized for Phase 1, or 66% of the over $400mn project.
DOE said in its Phase 2 selection announcement that successful development of advanced technologies and innovative concepts reducing CO2 atmospheric emissions is a key objective of the Obama administration's efforts to help mitigate the effects of climate change.
The Phase 2 projects selected were aimed at testing large-scale industrial carbon capture and storage (CCS), an important step in moving CCS technology toward eventual commercial deployment, company officials said.
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