Talk about changing times. An old gasification plant in West Terre Haute, Indiana is getting a new life. It will use petroleum coke and biomass to produce hydrogen for power. It will also capture and sequester the resulting CO2. Just how realistic is this pursuit and just how clean is the process?
The developers say that it is viable. The hydrogen will be separated and the resulting energy is expected to be sold to power generators and chemical makers. Using a proprietary process, the CO2 will be captured and buried. It is a cost effective endeavor, they add, because it is repurposing an existing asset. It has also received both federal funding and federal tax credits.
“For all of those reasons this is a clean energy project that is likely to move forward,” says Beth Carter, senior business manager for clean hydrogen at Honeywell, in a Zoom conversation with this reporter. “These projects are commercially available today. The energy transition is not something that will happen in a decade or two. We are showing the world it is happening now and that it is important.”
It’s a dual operation between Wabash Valley Resources LLC and Honeywell UOP technologies to capture and sequester up to 1.65 million tons of CO2 a year. While it got funding from the Department of Energy’s “Carbon Storage Program,” the companies said that this is small percentage of the overall $600 million cost. Meantime, the conversion of the gasification plant got started in 2020 and the developers expect the remodeled facility to generate 300 megawatts of electricity with net-zero CO2 emissions in 2024.
- Hydrogen Economy
- June 6, 2021
