Edinburgh students meet the Energy and Climate Change Secretary at Ferrybridge Carbon Capture pilot plant

The largest carbon capture pilot plant in the UK was launched this week at the Ferrybridge power station in Yorkshire. Known as the CCPilot 100+, the unit captures 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide per day, the equivalent of 5 megawatts of coal-fired power generation. The pilot plant, developed and constructed in just two years, is a joint venture of SSE, Doosan Power Systems, and Vattenfall, supported by DECC, the TSB and Northern Way. The University of Edinburgh is one of four universities associated with the project, and Engineering students working on carbon capture will have the opportunity to visit the plant, with some postgraduate researchers spending longer periods of time on site.

The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne, who attended the launch, described the flagship test programme as "an important milestone in the UK’s plans to develop carbon capture and storage, and a critical bridge to meeting our long term aim of cost-competitive CCS deployment by the 2020s".

Edinburgh PhD students, including Olivia Errey (in photo), from Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage (SCCS), who are due to spend two months based at the plant, met with the Energy and Climate Change Secretary at the plant to explain their research on aspects of post combustion carbon capture and discuss the importance of the real power station project data to verify small scale experiments and modelling work. With its focus on capture technology development, this project will vent the CO2 into the atmosphere. However, isolated carbon dioxide could in future be used in industrial applications or disposed of in deep rock formations. Learning from the CCPilot 100+ test unit will inform SSE’s larger full-chain carbon capture initiative at Peterhead in Scotland, which includes storage of the CO2 in deep rock under the North Sea.

From left to right: Sam Pickard (University of Leeds), Ahmed Aboudheir (Chief Technology Officer for HTC, Regina), Chris Huhne, and Olivia Errey (University of Edinburgh).
From left to right: Sam Pickard (University of Leeds), Ahmed Aboudheir (Chief Technology Officer for HTC, Regina), Chris Huhne, and Olivia Errey (University of Edinburgh).