Basin Electric Power CO2 capture projects receive funding

Basin Electric Power Cooperative said several carbon capture and storage (CCS) research projects hosted at the co-op’s Dry Fork Station near Gillette, Wyoming have earned federal funding.

The 405 MW coal-fired Dry Fork plant is home to the Wyoming Integrated Test Center. The CCS testing facility allows CO2 capture technology companies access to the flue gas that would otherwise be released from the plant.

In March Membrane Technology and Research (MTR) Carbon Capture announced that it received $4.6 million to develop a Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) study for an integrated CCS project at Dry Fork. Wyoming CarbonSAFE, led by the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources (SER), is a partner for sequestering the captured CO2 and is a co-recipient of the award.

MTR Carbon Capture will use its proprietary Polaris polymeric membrane. The company aims to capture, compress and store onsite 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, achieving at least a 90% carbon capture rate.

This FEED study funding is part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) Carbon Capture Demonstration Projects Program, which advances carbon management technologies. The goal of the program is to accelerate the demonstration and deployment of integrated carbon capture, transport, and storage technologies.

This project is the second DOE award for MTR Carbon Capture at Dry Fork Station. In 2023, the company began construction on a large-scale pilot plant at the Wyoming Integrated Test Center to capture carbon dioxide from flue gas produced at Dry Fork Station. When operational later in 2024, the company claims it will be the world’s largest membrane-based carbon capture pilot project.

In February, OCED announced the selection of TDA Research Inc. (TDA) to negotiate an award of up to $49 million to test a carbon capture system at the Wyoming Integrated Test Center. TDA is collaborating with global energy technology company SLB as its technology development and deployment partner.