Coal Country to Receive a CO2 Cleaning

A national demonstration project to remove carbon dioxide from an existing coal-fired power plant will go into construction in Coal Country next year.

Basin Electric Power Cooperative and Powerspan Corp. have completed the feasibility study portion of the project that will remove about 1 million tons of CO2 from Unit 1 of Basin’s Antelope Valley Station in Mercer County.

The companies, plus state energy leaders, will detail the project at a press conference today at Basin’s headquarters in Bismarck.

The carbon gas is not regulated like other plant emissions, but it’s expected that some controls will be required to reduce greenhouses gases attributed to global warming.

The project at Antelope Valley will demonstrate technology that removes carbon gas from an older plant and will have applications for other plants around the country. It will be among the largest carbon capture projects anywhere in the world.

It will take two years to complete the work at an estimated $56 million.

Basin also owns Dakota Gasification Co., which strips carbon in the process of making synthetic natural gas from lignite coal.

The carbon gas captured from Antelope Valley, which is co- located with DGC, will be added to the compressed carbon stream that’s piped to Canada for deep injection to enhance oil recovery.

Basin owns lignite plants in North Dakota and Wyoming. Powerspan, based in New Hampshire, develops clean-power technology for the electric energy industry.

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