The Petra Nova carbon capture plant is being revived. Can it live up to its promise?
The coal-burning power plants stand behind the Petra Nova Carbon Capture plant at NRG’s WA Parish power plant on Friday, Oct. 14, 2022 in Richmond.Texas was the site of one of the first injections of carbon dioxide back into the ground, when officials with Chevron began flooding an oil reservoir about 80 miles west of Abilene with the gas to increase its output of oil.
Take Petra Nova, the first commercial-scale carbon capture facility to be affixed to a power plant in the United States. It was one of the largest and only modern carbon capture projects for enhanced oil recovery globally. Flue gas from W.A. Parish's coal-powered Unit 8 was piped into the Petra Nova complex, where it was cooled, then sent to an absorbing unit, which peeled the carbon dioxide off from the flue gas by mixing it with a solvent. The treated flue gas would be released, and the carbon dioxide separated from the solvent in a regeneration unit. That carbon dioxide would be compressed, then piped 81 miles to the West Ranch oil field in Jackson County, sequestering the gas as it pumped up more oil.
The project fell nearly 1 million tons short of its original goal of sequestering 3.2 million tons of carbon dioxide within its first two years. It ultimately sequestered more than 3.9 million tons of carbon dioxide within three years. Chevron’s Gorgon LNG project in Australia was supposed to start capturing carbon dioxide in July 2016, but technical problems held up the first injections until August 2019.