Domestic

China's Shenhua says CTL plant to begin storing carbon in '11

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-11-30 15:24

BEIJING - A pilot carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility built by China's Shenhua Group will begin storing carbon dioxide early next year, an official with the firm said on Tuesday.

Gu Dazhao, general manager of science and technology department told an industry conference that the facility, installed at the firm's coal-to-liquids plant in Inner Mongolia, will start injecting captured CO2 into underground storage facilities in January 2011.

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China has already built two small pilot CCS plants in Beijing and Shanghai. CCS technology captures carbon dioxide produced during the coal combustion process and aims to store it underground indefinitely.

Shenhua's coal-to-liquid plant is the first of its kind to go into operation in China, and Gu said the company plans to produce 3 million tonnes of oil products from coal in 2015, up from 500,000 tonnes this year.

It also aims to produce 11 million tonnes of oil products and 18.3 billion cubic metres of gas from coal by 2020.

China started pushing for the widespread adoption of coal conversion technologies in 2006 to help cut dependence on expensive foreign oil. It allowed the construction of Shenhua's facility in Inner Mongolia to go ahead, and also permitted research to continue into another CTL plant in Ningxia, jointly invested by Shenhua and the South African energy giant Sasol.

Gu told reporters that the Ningxia plant, with a proposed annual capacity of 3 million tonnes, was still awaiting NDRC approval.