Power Companies Join Forces for TIPS Technology
ThermoEnergy Corp. of Little Rock, Ark., and Babcock Power Inc. of Danvers, Mass., announced on Feb. 26 the formation of a limited liability company to be called Babcock-Thermo Carbon Capture LLC, to develop and commercialize a new and advanced carbon capture power plant design.
Since entering into a memoranum of uinderstanding in April of 2008, the two companies have worked together to further advance the ThermoEnergy Integrated Power System (TIPS) technology and will now formally join forces to develop subsystems and designs for pilot plant application.
This patented new technology represents a totally different thermodynamic approach in power plant design. Based on high pressure oxy-fuel chemistry, TIPS combines the combustion of carbonaceous fuels, including coal, oil, natural gas, municipal waste, and biomass, into energy with near-zero air emissions and no smoke stack. In addition, it effectively captures carbon dioxide in clean, pressurized liquid form ready for sequestration or beneficial reuse, such as enhanced oil recovery. The TIPS technology promises to achieve greater fossil-fuel power plant thermal efficiency due to its novel and patented process design. Coupled with the recovery of pipeline quality liquid CO2, TIPS is expected to have an economic and environmental edge over competing carbon capture technologies.
Babcock Power and its subsidiaries design and supply environmental pollution controls, combustion and steam generator technology, and other power plant heat exchanger products and systems. This experience will be used to design the TIPS process components and subsystems for pressurized oxy-fuel burners and combustors, heat transfer surfaces for generating superheat and reheat steam and condensing heat exchangers that will remove the products of combustion including toxic pollutants, water, and CO2 as liquid streams.
"Planned TIPS industrial heat and power plants represent an ideal solution for many U.S. infrastructure industries," said Dennis Cossey, chair and chief executive officer of ThermoEnergy. "Not only will it allow them to switch to a cheaper fuel source, significantly lowering energy costs, but reduce the plant's carbon footprint at the same time. The carbon credit offsets associated with greatly reducing greenhouse gas emissions could eventually provide a substantial source of income should Congress enact some form of carbon tax in the coming months," said Cossey.
"The progression of the TIPS technology coincides well with the timeline of anticipated forthcoming CO2 legislation," stated James F. Wood, president and chief executive officer of Babcock Power Inc. "As we evolve TIPS into a commercial-scale product utilizing pilot plant results, Babcock-Thermo Carbon Capture LLC will be well positioned to compete in the multibillion dollar CO2 capture market."