CCS in the Netherlands - and the future of ROAD

2014-07-04 09:17 by Anja Reitz

The ROAD project, to capture CO2 from a new power plant located on the Maasvlakte, in the Port of Rotterdam, and store the CO2 in a depleted gas reservoir in the North Sea, just 25km away, is currently “essentially mothballed” while the project team wait for financing to be agreed, said capture director Andy Read.
He was speaking at the 7th Dutch CCS Symposium of Dutch research organisation CATO in Amsterdam on June 19-20.  
CATO stands for CO2 Afvang, Transport en Opslag, or CO2 capture, transport and storage. ROAD stands for Rotterdam Opslag en Afvang Demonstratieproject or Rotterdam Capture and Storage Demonstration Project.
All the engineering for ROAD is complete, Mr Read said. So far the EU has committed Eur 180m to ROAD, the Dutch government ‘up to’ Eur 150m, and the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (GCCSI) up to Eur 5m.
ROAD aims to capture CO2 from a new power plant located on the Maasvlakte, in the Port of Rotterdam, and store the CO2 in a depleted gas reservoir in the North Sea, just 25km away. 
“It is one of the best CCS projects,” Mr Read said. Being next to the sea, the capture plant doesn’t need cooling water. There is a huge amount of industry adjacent to the North Sea [which could provide CO2]. Rotterdam already pumps CO2 to greenhouses to fertilise plants, and “this could be extended”.
The ROAD project was launched in 2008, after E.ON agreed it could be connected to its new power plant. The project then became a key pillar of the Rotterdam Climate Initiative project. 
Over the past six years the ROAD team has worked closely with CATO researchers on many aspects, including power plant integration, managing emissions, and flow assurance, he said. 
For example there were concerns that the high pressure CO2 would freeze as it entered the low pressure (20 bar) reservoir and expand, and CATO did research to try to work out what would happen.
 
Source: Carbon Capture Journal, news, 1 July 2014

Go back