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UPDATED 1 Sept: The EI library in London is temporarily closed to the public, as a precautionary measure in light of the ongoing COVID-19 situation. The Knowledge Service will still be answering email queries via email , or via live chats during working hours (09:15-17:00 GMT). Our e-library is always open for members here: eLibrary , for full-text access to over 200 e-books and millions of articles. Thank you for your patience.
Drax switches to gas and a BECCS pilot project
Operators of the Drax power station in Yorkshire – formerly Britain’s largest coal-fired power station and once said to be the single largest emitter of carbon dioxide in Europe – have taken three significant steps to achieving its coal-free ambitions.
First, they have taken its fourth coal-fired power generating unit offline as part of a planned outage programme as it prepares to convert it to run on biomass. Once the upgrade is complete, Drax says that two-thirds of the power station’s capacity will produce power from renewables.
The company says that it has already invested around £700mn in upgrading half the power station and associated supply chain infrastructure to use biomass instead of coal – transforming the business to become Europe’s largest decarbonisation project. The conversion of the fourth unit is expected to be complete over the summer.
Drax says that its engineers will upgrade the unit by re-using some redundant infrastructure left from when the company was first co-firing biomass with coal on a large scale, around eight years ago. A trial last year confirmed that by modifying the old co-firing delivery system, compressed wood pellets can be delivered in the quantities required to fully convert the fourth generating unit.
Second, Drax is to pilot the first bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS) project of its kind in Europe, which could make the renewable electricity produced at its North Yorkshire power station ‘carbon negative’. Under the BECCS concept – biofuels and carbon capture – power generation would no longer contribute to climate change, but would start to reduce the carbon accumulating in the atmosphere.
The demonstration project will see Drax partner with Leeds-based C-Capture and invest £400,000 in what could be the first of several pilot projects to deliver a demonstration of BECCS, says the power generator. The first phase of the project will look to see if the solvent C-Capture has developed is compatible with the biomass flue gas at Drax Power Station. The team could then proceed to the second phase of the pilot in the autumn, when a demonstration unit would be installed to isolate the carbon dioxide produced by the biomass combustion.
Last, Drax Power Station has submitted a planning application for its proposed Repower gas-fired generation and battery storage project. Plans to replace Drax’s remaining coal generating units with up to 3.6 GW of gas-fired power generation and up to 200 MW of battery storage were first set out in September 2017.
