SaskPower's Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) facility at Boundary Dam Power Station (BDPS) exceeded its daily capture rate targets for 2018, while also achieving the second-lowest operating cost per tonne of CO2 captured since 2014.
"The strong performance of the CCS facility in 2018 is encouraging and demonstrates that clean coal can still have a place in the power generation mix," said Howard Matthews, SaskPower Vice-President of Power Production. "These positive numbers reflect improvements made during the 2017 planned maintenance outage."
In 2018, the CCS facility captured a total of 625,996 tonnes of CO2, while the overall availability of the facility was 69 per cent. However, the availability rate increases to 94 per cent if you exclude the days when the CCS facility was available but Boundary Dam Power Station Unit 3 (BD3) was offline. On June 14, Boundary Dam Power Station experienced a severe storm that resulted in an 84-day outage at BD3. The CCS facility was unable to capture any CO2 during this period. Additionally, BD3 was down 285 hours for two separate boiler tube leaks, and 87 hours following the massive power outage that affected the province December 4.
During the periods CCS was capturing CO2, the average capture rate was 2505 tonnes per day (TPD), which is greater than the 2435 TPD daily rate established as a target.
In 2014, Boundary Dam Power Station near Estevan became the first power station in the world to successfully use CCS technology. Since start-up, the facility has captured 2,465,333 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of taking 616,333 cars off Saskatchewan roads.
CCS is part of SaskPower's commitment to reduce emissions by 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Reducing the carbon footprint of electricity generation in the province is a key component of Saskatchewan's Prairie Resilience climate change strategy.
SaskPower continues to post full monthly updates from the Boundary Dam CCS process on saskpower.com/blog.
At a glance...
- CCS facility captured 625,996 tonnes of CO2 in 2018, a 23% increase over 2017
- Availability rate was 94 per cent, excepting downtime at the power station caused by severe weather
- Daily capture rate was 2502 Tonnes Per Day (TPD), greater than target of 2435 TPD
