The long-awaited announcement that a carbon capture test facility that will be linked to SaskPower's Shand Power Station near Estevan was made Tuesday morning when Hitachi Ltd. and SaskPower said they were forming a partnership to construct the $60 million unit.
This add-on component will allow international developers the opportunity to fully evaluate system performances in terms of capturing carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired thermal power plants.
SaskPower and Hitachi will share the construction costs equally and SaskPower will serve as owner and operator of the carbon capture test facility (CCTF).
Construction is slated to begin later this year, or early 2013 with a scheduled completion date of mid-2014.
Hitachi will bring in their development team as well as core process equipment from their Saskatoon manufacturing plant and they will be the first to test proprietary amine technology at Shand.
SaskPower expects to evaluate a number of current and emerging carbon capture technologies over the life of the facility since the CCTF will be built to accommodate a wide range of test configurations ensuring it remains viable for years.
The CCTF component dovetails neatly with the commercial sized fully-integrated carbon capture and storage system currently under construction at the nearby Boundary Dam Power Station. This is a $1.24 billion rebuild of Boundary's Unit No. 3 which will eventually lead to the capture, sequestration and eventual re-use of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery in the southeastern Saskatchewan oil patch.
Robert Watson, president and CEO of SaskPower, said the partnership solidified a long-standing partnership with Hitachi that dates back to the 1970s.
Rob Norris, minister responsible for SaskPower, labelled the announcement a double-win for the province since it meant Saskatchewan would remain a world leader in carbon capture technologies while supporting Hitachi's manufacturing capacity in the province.
