PPL lands $72M DOE funding for CO2 capture R&D project

In Pennsylvania, PPL Corporation and its research partners have been selected for a $72 million award negotiation by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) to help fund a ground-breaking carbon dioxide (CO2) capture research and development project expected to cost in excess of $100 million.

The research project and new carbon capture system – developed in partnership with the University of Kentucky and others – will be hosted at PPL subsidiaries Louisville Gas and Electric Company’s (LG&E) and Kentucky Utilities Company’s (KU) Cane Run 7 natural gas combined-cycle generating station in Louisville, Ky.
The new 20-megawatt research system planned for Cane Run is designed to capture a portion of the CO2 from the natural gas plant’s flue gas using an advanced heat-integrated CO2 capture technology.

The goal is to capture up to 240 tons of CO2 per day and up to 90,000 metric tons of CO2 per year – an amount equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of 20,000 gasoline-powered cars, according to OCED. This is an important step in assessing the future viability of utility-scale carbon capture technology on natural gas units.