Arizona Public Service’s ongoing algae-based carbon mitigation project, previously selected via competitive solicitation, will be expanded to include testing with a coal-based gasification system. The process aims to minimize production of carbon dioxide when gasifying coal. The host facility for this project is the Cholla Power Plant located in Holbrook, AZ.

Funding for the project expansion falls under the ARRA’s $1.52 billion solicitation for carbon capture and storage from industrial sources. (Earlier post.) The industrial sources include, but are not limited to, cement plants, chemical plants, refineries, steel and aluminum plants, manufacturing facilities, and petroleum coke-fired and other power plants. Part of the solicitation includes innovative concepts for beneficial CO₂ reuse (CO₂ mineralization, algae production, etc.) and CO₂ capture from the atmosphere.

The APS project is one of two already-existing projects in the industrial carbon capture program administered by DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy. The other, previously announced, is a Ramgen Power Systems project to scale-up a device that uses supersonic shockwaves to compress CO₂ for capture and storage.

Arizona Public Service will scale up a concept for coproduction of electricity and substitute natural gas via coal gasification, while scaling up an innovative reutilization technology where power plant CO2 emissions are biologically captured by algae and processed into liquid transportation fuels. APS will focus on the engineering aspects of continuous cultivation, harvesting, and processing of algae grown from power plant emissions.

Funding will enable APS to scale up its algae cultivation concept by about two orders of magnitude and scale up its hydrogasification concept by one order of magnitude. Researchers expect that the algae farm will reuse CO₂ at a rate of 70 metric tons per acre per year.