Boundary Dam capture plant packing replacement after 10 years apparently confirmed but more details needed to inform future sector cost reductions

Replacing the packing in an amine post-combustion capture plant’s absorber, stripper or wash units would be expected to have significant cost implications and require a major outage.? Information on the reasons why this might be necessary, leading to ways of avoiding the need for packing replacement within the lifetime of the plant, or at least prolonging the replacement period, is therefore of significant value for reducing the costs of future CCS deployment based on this widely-used capture technology.

A previous article quoted a GHGT16 paper from 2022 by the International CCS Knowledge Centre and SaskPower on “Improving the Operating Availability of the Boundary Dam Unit 3 Carbon Capture Facility” that gave the expected period for ‘SO2 and CO2 absorber amine packings replacement’ at this, the world’s first, large-scale power plant CO2 capture project as 6-8 years.? ??Additional information in the same GHGT 16 paper stated “SO2 stripper packing replacement - 1 year”.? The CO2 stripper packing replacement period does not appear to be identified but in another paper, from GHGT 15 in 2020, it was stated that “in February 2017, CO2 stripper packing damage caused by the instability of the system from antifoam was discovered on a small section of bed 1. During the June 2017 outage, damage was also observed in the packing further up the column. Damaged packing in the affected beds was replaced in July of 2017.”

This need for packing replacement was recently confirmed in an announcement by Sulzer that “beginning 2025, carbon capture at the Boundary Dam power plant will rely on Sulzer’s cutting-edge technology, MellapakCC? and MellaTech?”, implying that at least some existing packing and tower internals are being replaced.?

It is not clear what units are having packing replacements, though, and my further searches for other pieces of information to try and understand what is actually going on at Boundary Dam with regard to packing issues, including how the the biological fouling issues have developed, have drawn a blank.? That there are these major developments occurring, nearly ten years after the official opening of this capture unit, does, however, confirm the importance of long-term knowledge exchange from publicly-supported amine post-combustion projects - i.e. over the full period of that public support.? It also highlights the need for information to be provided at a suitable level of detail, in a timely manner and all linked to a known single web site.

All of these requirements for effective knowledge exchange are going to be discussed at a UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre (UKCCSRC) workshop on 5 September: ‘What lessons need to be captured from amine post-combustion projects to enable costs to come down in the future? ’?that will examine how to deliver on one of the conclusions of the UK National Audit Office ’s ’Value for Money’ report on the UK’s ‘Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage programme’ that:

“The government will extract greater value for money from the first wave of projects if it ensures lessons are captured, both in terms of the negotiation process and technologically, to enable costs to come down in future, as has been the experience for offshore wind.”