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MHI's CO2 Capture Technology Has Been Selected by E.ON UK

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Tokyo, June 18, 2009 - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has been selected as technology provider of carbon dioxide (CO2) capture technology by E.ON UK for its application to the UK Government's CCS demonstration competition. MHI, in consortium with Foster Wheeler Energy Limited in the UK, has received an order from E.ON UK plc, a leading UK energy company, to carry out the pre-front-end engineering design (pre-FEED) of a CO2 capture plant planned for a coal-fired power station. The CO2 recovery plant is part of E.ON's project, potentially one of the world's largest-scale of this kind, to recover and store CO2 from the flue gas of the company's new 1,600 MW (megawatt) supercritical pressure coal-fired power generation plant to be built in the UK. E.ON has proposed the project for the UK government-funded large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration project. If the UK government awards the demonstration project to E.ON, which is in competition with two other contenders, MHI will provide the technology for the world's first commercial-scale plant which is expected initially to capture approximately two million tonnes per annum of CO2, with provisions for future expansion.

For this demonstration project, which is led by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, the three competing companies are each proposing a plan targeting their own power generation plant. E.ON plans to build a CCS facility at its Kingsnorth Power Station in Kent. The new supercritical power generation units, which will replace the station's existing coal-fired units, will mark the first coal-fired power generation plant to be built in the UK in 30 years. E.ON plans to separate, recover and compress the CO2 from the coal-fired flue gas and to store it within a depleted gas reservoir in the southern North Sea in collaboration with Tullow Oil plc, a UK oil company.

MHI's CO2 recovery technology is known as the KM-CDR Process™. It uses the company's proprietary KS-1 solvent for CO2 absorption and desorption, which MHI and the Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. developed jointly. MHI's KM-CDR Process requires considerably lower energy consumption than other technologies and its performance has been highly evaluated. To date MHI has delivered or provided the technology to nine commercial plants for CO2 recovery from natural gas-fired flue gas, of which five are already on-stream – making MHI the leader in large-scale CO2 recovery facilities.

With respect to CO2 recovery from coal-fired flue gas, which contains more impurities, MHI is in the stage of confirming the technology for commercialization. MHI has already conducted small-scale demonstration testing for CO2 recovery from coal-fired flue gas at 10 tons/day, from 2006 through 2008, and confirmed its uninterrupted stable operation.

For its participation in the CCS demonstration project calling for CO2 recovery from the flue gas of a coal-fired generation plant, MHI looks to propose a reliable and economically viable technology that is applicable to large-scale CCS for coal-fired plants. Simultaneously it aims to vigorously pursue business expansion in this area while also contributing to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gases.

 

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Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) Group is one of the world’s leading industrial groups, spanning energy, smart infrastructure, industrial machinery, aerospace and defense. MHI Group combines cutting-edge technology with deep experience to deliver innovative, integrated solutions that help to realize a carbon neutral world, improve the quality of life and ensure a safer world. For more information, please visit www.mhi.com or follow our insights and stories on spectra.mhi.com.

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