MHI Receives Award for Testing of 3,400ton/day CO2 Recovery Facility

The planned CO2 capture project is aimed at qualifying a design suitable for removing, capturing, compressing and storing CO2 emitted from an existing natural-gas-fired CHP plant in operation at Mongstad since 2010 at an oil refinery operated by Statoil. In the next phase of the project, Statoil will select concepts for the subsequent front-end engineering and design (FEED).

The companies participating in the TQP competition will individually conduct verification testing of the system's continuous operation at their respective testing facilities. MHI will conduct 3,000-hour testing in total using a testing facility at the Nanko Thermal Power Plant of the Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. Plans call for a final decision on construction of the full-scale CO2 capture facility to be made around 2016, based on the FEED competition.

Statoil, the largest company of its kind in the Nordic region, is an enterprise that comprehensively operates energy-related businesses spanning from oil and gas production and refining to sales.

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 Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. developed jointly. MHI's technology results in considerably lower energy consumption than other processes, winning it high evaluations from the market for its performance. To date MHI has delivered ten commercial chemical plants for CO2 recovery from natural-gas-fired or heavy-oil-fired flue gas, and one other chemical plant is currently under construction, making MHI a leader in the industry. The company has also built the world's largest 500 tons/day CO2 recovery demonstration plant for coal-fired power generation at Southern Company's Plant Barry in Alabama USA. MHI has begun demonstration testing of the facility in June 2011 jointly with Southern Company, one of the largest electric utilities in the country.

In 2009 the company completed the FEED for a 3,000 tpd CO2 recovery facility for a GTCC power plant in Norway. A structure has also been put in place enabling MHI to respond promptly to demand for large-scale carbon recovery systems.

Through participation in a CCS-related project in highly environmental-minded Norway, MHI looks to establish its presence and demonstrate its reliability in CO2 recovery technology as well as its response capability in large-scale facilities. Going forward the company will further promote expansion of its business in CCS while also contributing to global efforts to reduce greenhouse gases.

Note:
KM-CDR Process is a registered trademark of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., in Japan, the United States, the European Union (CTM), Norway, Australia and China.