Power station Drax aims to place UK at front of green energy race

The team behind the new project: L-R: Jason Shipstone, Head of R&D, Drax Group; Caspar Schoolderman, Director of Engineering, C-Capture Ltd; Andy Koss, CEO Drax Power; Prof Christopher Rayner, Technical Director, C-Capture Ltd; Carl Clayton, Research and Innovation Engineer, Drax Group.

Drax has announced that it is to pilot the first bio-energy carbon capture storage (BECCS) project of its kind in Europe, which, if successful, could make the renewable electricity produced at its North Yorkshire power station carbon negative.

Bosses at Drax believe that BECCS will play a vital role in global efforts to combat climate change because the technology will mean the gases that cause global warning can be removed from the atmosphere at the same time as electricity is produced.

A Drax statement said: “This means power generation would no longer contribute to climate change, but would start to reduce the carbon accumulating in the atmosphere.”

The demonstration project will see Drax join forces with Leeds-based C-Capture and invest £400,000 in what could be the first of several pilot projects undertaken at Drax to deliver a rapid, lower cost demonstration of BECCS.

The spokesman added: “Drax Power Station became the largest decarbonisation project in Europe by upgrading its existing facilities and, if the pilot is successful, it will examine options for a similar re-purposing of existing infrastructure to deliver more carbon savings.

“A report by the Energy Technology Institute in 2016 has suggested that by the 2050s BECCS could deliver roughly 55 million tonnes of net negative emissions a year in the UK – approximately half the nation’s emissions target.”

The first phase of the project, starting this month, will assess whether the solvent C-Capture has developed is compatible with the biomass flue gas at Drax Power Station.

A lab-scale study into the feasibility of using the flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) absorbers at the power station will also be carried out to assess potential capture rates.

Drax’s management believe that FGD equipment can play a vital role in reducing sulphur emissions from coal, but it has become redundant on three of the generating units at Drax that have been upgraded to use biomass, because the wood pellets used produce minimal levels of sulphur.

The statement said: “Depending on the outcome of a feasibility study, the C-Capture team will proceed to the second phase of the pilot in the autumn, when a demonstration unit will be installed to isolate the carbon dioxide produced by the biomass combustion.”

Will Gardiner, CEO of Drax Group, said: “If the world is to achieve the targets agreed in Paris and pursue a cleaner future, negative emissions are a must – and BECCS is a leading technology to help achieve it.

“This pilot is the UK’s first step, but it won’t be the only one at Drax. We will soon have four operational biomass units, which provide us with a great opportunity to test different technologies that could allow Drax, the country and the world, to deliver negative emissions and start to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

Unlike previous CCS projects Drax has been involved with, this is an early pilot for a new technology. It will examine the potential of a new form of carbon capture, post combustion on biomass, rather than coal.

The Government’s Clean Growth Strategy identified BECCS as one of several greenhouse gas removal technologies that could remove emissions from the atmosphere and help achieve long term decarbonisation.

C-Capture is a spin-out from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Leeds, established through funding from IP Group Plc.

The Government has welcomed Drax’s plans to press ahead with piloting Europe’s first bio-energy carbon capture storage project.

Claire Perry, the Energy & Clean Growth Minister, said: “We aim to make the UK a world leader in carbon capture usage and storage, a key part of our modern Industrial Strategy.

“It’s hugely exciting that Drax has chosen to invest in this innovative project, demonstrating how Government support for innovation can create an environment where companies can develop new technologies and scale up investment to build the sectors we will need to achieve long term decarbonisation.”

Chris Rayner, founder of C-Capture and Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Leeds, said: “Through the pilot scheme we aim to demonstrate that the technology we’ve developed is a cost-effective way to achieve one of the holy grails of CO2 emissions strategies - negative emissions in power production, which is where we believe the potential CO2 emissions reductions are likely to be the greatest.”