Carbon Capture Costs: FEED & pre-FEED Cost Reports

Milton R. Young Station Unit 2 is conducting a FEED study to add a post-combustion CO₂ capture system using Fluor’s Econamine FG Plus™ technology to its lignite-fueled power plant in North Dakota. The design targets 3.6 million tonnes of CO₂ captured annually—twice the scale of the largest existing facility—while integrating advanced heat recovery, aerosol and solvent degradation controls, and cold-climate optimization to achieve the lowest levelized cost of capture at world scale. The study will deliver detailed design, cost, and performance data for financing, permitting, and final project scheduling.

Analysis sets the design and cost-estimating basis for evaluating pulp and board mills with and without CCS. Two base cases are considered: a market pulp mill and an integrated pulp and board mill. Six CCS cases are evaluated, capturing CO₂ from the recovery boiler, multi-fuel boiler, lime kiln, or their combinations. The mills are assumed to be energy independent, with black liquor and bark burned to produce steam and electricity, and excess electricity exported to the grid. The CO₂ capture system uses post-combustion MEA technology with a 90% capture rate, and if on-site electricity is insufficient, an auxiliary boiler firing forest residues will supply the additional energy. Capture of CO2 in the Kraft Recovery Boiler only

A Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) study was undertaken to design an advanced CO2 Capture Unit (CCU) to produce 1000 tonnes per day of CO2 from the exhaust of three Once-Through Steam Generators (OTSG’s) at Devon Energy’s Jackfish 1 thermal in-situ operations and estimate the capital expenditure for the facilities within +/-15% accuracy. The process utilizes HTC Purenergy Carbon Capture Technology to capture CO2 from the OTSG exhaust gas using an aqueous chemical solvent in an absorber tower, after which the CO2-loaded solvent is passed to a stripper tower where the CO2 is released and the solvent regenerated. The study excludes downstream CO2 compression, dehydration, transportation and storage.