Masdar and Hydrogen Energy, the joint venture between BP Alternative Energy and Rio Tinto, have signed an agreement to work together on the front-end engineering design of a clean energy plant in Abu Dhabi.

Masdar is Abu Dhabi’s initiative for renewable and alternative energy and clean technology.

The industrial-scale hydrogen-fired power generation project with capture of the carbon dioxide (CO2) would then be available for transportation and storage, said a company official.

'Natural gas would be processed to create hydrogen and CO2. The hydrogen fuel would generate low-carbon electricity. Rather than being emitted to the atmosphere, the CO2 would be captured, ready for transportation and injection into a producing oil field where it could replace natural gas currently being injected into the field to maintain pressure,' Lewis Gillies, chief executive of Hydrogen Energy, said.

'The injected CO2 has also the potential to increase the proportion of Abu Dhabi’s oil that can be recovered,' he added.

“The joint project will bring together - in a single integrated scheme - a number of technologies already operating at scale successfully around the world,” said Dr Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of Masdar.

Work has already started and front-end engineering and design of the project is planned to be completed by the end of 2008, at a cost of some $45 million.

At the heart of the plant would be a natural gas reformer and carbon capture facility where 100 million cubic feet of natural gas per day would be transformed into hydrogen and CO2 gases.

The hydrogen gas would be used to fuel gas turbines and generate around 420MW of low-carbon electricity, with water vapour being the main emission. This would be enough to provide more than 5 per cent of all Abu Dhabi’s current power generation capacity.

The project would limit greenhouse gas emissions by capturing some 90 per cent of the CO2 generated, and safely and permanently storing up to 1.7 million tonnes of CO2 per year - the equivalent of decarbonising Abu Dhabi’s entire domestic transport sector.

The CO2 would replace the natural gas currently being injected into oil fields, allowing the gas to be used to fuel Abu Dhabi’s continued growth, or to be exported. If this process was deployed at scale it would potentially release a significant amount of additional natural gas for Abu Dhabi and United Arab Emirates.

The CO2 injected into the oil fields could also potentially enable previously unrecoverable oil to be produced. If deployed widely, this enhanced oil recovery process could boost Abu Dhabi’s oil production significantly.

The CO2 would remain stored securely and permanently in the oil field beneath its natural impervious seal.

The overall project would require total capital investment (excluding the investment in CO2 transportation and sequestration) of about Dh7 billion ($2 billion).

The plant would come into commercial operation in 2012. At peak, about 1,000 jobs would be created during construction of the onshore facilities, with up to 100 permanent jobs when the plant is operational.

Announced on the opening day of the Abu Dhabi World Future Energy Summit, the project demonstrates Abu Dhabi’s desire to turn words into action and is a major step for Abu Dhabi to establish leadership in the area of alternative energy technologies.-TradeArabia News Service