Dry Fork Secures Federal Funding Under $1B Large-Scale Carbon Capture Pilot Program

A project near Basin Electric’s Dry Fork Power Station, a 405-MW coal-fired power plant in Gillette, Wyoming, has become the first of four Department of Energy (DOE) selections to receive federal funding to kick off a large-scale carbon capture pilot.

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The DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) on Aug. 27 said it awarded the project, “Carbon Capture Pilot at Dry Fork Power Station,” nearly $5 million out of a total federal cost share of up to $49 million under its Carbon Capture Large-Scale Pilot Projects Program. The funding kicks off Phase 1 activities at the Wyoming Integrated Test Center, which is located seven miles north of Dry Fork Power Station.

Under the pilot project, industrial research firm TDA Research will collaborate with Schlumberger Technology Corp. to deploy a carbon capture system at a Wyoming Integrated Test Center test bay that is equipped to deliver up to 23 MWe of flue gas. The pilot intends to capture “more than 90% of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from coal flue exhaust at high purity (+95%), using TDA Research’s highly stable, low-cost sorbent-based technology in a vacuum and concentration swing adsorption process,” OCED said in an Aug. 27 fact sheet.

The pilot project’s key goal is to deploy a system that could capture up to 158,000 metric tons of CO₂ each year. “If successfully demonstrated, TDA Research’s technology could be scaled up for use at coal plants around the world,” the agency said.

During Phase 1, which will span 18 to 22 months, TDA Research will complete a front-end engineering design (FEED) study to determine the specifications for carbon capture. It will also begin workforce planning, project permitting, and provide input into the National Environmental Policy Act review process. Plans also entail establishing relationships and pathways to build on community benefit activities in later project phases and evaluate a preliminary plan for CO2 offtake, “including the potential for carbon sequestration via Wyoming CarbonSAFE and any contingency offtake options,” the agency said.

The measure marks the first award after negotiation under the Carbon Capture Large-Scale Pilot Projects Program, for which the 2021-enacted Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) allots $937 million. According to the DOE, the program’s key aim is to develop “transformational carbon capture technologies to significantly improve the efficiency, effectiveness, costs, emissions reductions, and environmental performance of coal and natural gas use in power generation, manufacturing, and industrial facilities.”

In February 2024, OCED shortlisted three large-scale pilot projects that would proceed to award negotiation, along with Dry Fork. These selections remain under award negotiation, the DOE says.

Carbon Capture Pilot at Cane Run Generating Station, Louisville, Kentucky. Led by PPL Corp. with up to $72 million in federal funding, this pilot project will seek to capture 95% of CO2 emissions from Cane Run 7, a 640-MW gas-fired unit in Louisville, Kentucky, using a solvent-agnostic advanced heat-integrated technology developed by the University of Kentucky. The pilot could capture 90,000 metric tons of CO2 annually.

Cane Run 7, which came online in June 2015, was Kentucky’s first natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) generating unit. The project team reportedly plans to partner with an off-taker that will purify the captured CO2 for use as beverage-grade CO2.

Carbon Capture Pilot at Vicksburg Containerboard Mill, Vicksburg, Mississippi. Under this pilot and with a potential federal cost share of $88 million, RTI International, in collaboration with International Paper (IP), SLB, and Amazon, plans to implement a carbon capture system at IP’s pulp and paper mill in Vicksburg, Mississippi. “The Carbon Capture Pilot at Vicksburg Containerboard Mill expects to capture at least 90% of the CO2 from the mill’s power boiler flue gas using RTI’s non-aqueous solvent (NAS) technology,” DOE documents say. “This first-of-its-kind carbon capture project for the pulp and paper industry aims to capture 120,000 metric tons of CO2 per year … and transport it to a site for permanent geologic storage.”

Carbon Capture Pilot at Big Spring Refinery, Big Spring, Texas. Delek US Holdings plans to use up to $95 million in federal funding to deploy a carbon capture system at its Big Spring Refinery, an oil refinery in Big Spring, Texas to capture 145,000 metric tons of CO2 per year from the refinery’s Fluidized Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCCU). The pilot is expected to demonstrate a second-generation post-combustion carbon capture process developed by Svante Technologies to capture at least 90% of the CO2 from the refinery’s FCCU.

The DOE says it selected the Carbon Capture Large-Scale Pilot Projects through a merit-based review process following a funding opportunity announcement in February 2023. The projects were evaluated on criteria such as technical merit, financial viability, work plan, management, and community benefits, with selections made to ensure a balanced portfolio that meets statutory requirements.