Boundary Dam Power Station had a good year for carbon capture: SaskPower

The Boundary Dam Power Station had a strong year for carbon capture and storage, according to SaskPower.

The carbon capture facility turned in positive capture results for 2018, even though it had a summer storage outage at Boundary Dam 3(BD3).

Carbon Capture and Storage (CSS) facility at Boundary Dam Power Station exceeded its daily capture rate targets for 2018, SaskPower said, while also achieving the second-lowest operating cost per tonne of CO2 that has been 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’s 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.

On Jun. 14 the facility was hit by a bad storm resulting in an 84-day outage at BD3.

BD3 was also down for 285 hours for two separate boiler tube leaks, and 87 hours following a power outage that affected almost the entire southern half of the province on Dec. 4.

In 2014, Boundary Dam Power Station near Estevan, Sask., became the first power station in the world to use CCS technology successfully.