EPRI joins launch of National Carbon Capture Center

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Palo Alto, CA, May 27, 2009 – The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has joined with Southern Company, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and four other companies in forming the National Carbon Capture Center (NCCC) for the development and testing of advanced technologies to capture carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants.

The NCCC is located at the Power Systems Development Facility (PSDF), a research and development complex south of Birmingham, Ala., and will be managed and operated by Southern Company. Companies that will initially participate in the project also include American Electric Power, Luminant, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal. Others are expected to join the initiative as work progresses, according to a press release from EPRI.

The center, which will be fully operational in 2010, will support the work of scientists and technology developers from government, industry and universities in researching enhanced carbon capture technologies. It will facilitate testing and analyses in a power plant setting, at a size large enough to provide meaningful performance data under real operating conditions, enabling scale-up of the technologies.

Plans for the NCCC include testing of pre-combustion and post-combustion carbon capture technologies. Existing facilities at the PSDF will be modified to conduct pre-combustion CO2 capture testing. New facilities to conduct post-combustion testing and evaluation will be located at Southern Company subsidiary Alabama Power’s Plant Gaston, a coal-fired power plant adjacent to the PSDF.

EPRI will provide experienced technical staff to participate in the analysis of the research activities and the reporting of test results, in addition to some funding for the center.