It's not quite the home stretch, but the carbon capture and sequestration project at the Boundary Dam Power Station has taken another step towards the finish line.
SaskPower announced last week that Unit 3 at Boundary Dam, which is the unit being transformed for carbon capture, was taken off-line Monday as part of the ongoing work. Through a press release, it was noted that SaskPower will be refurbishing 40 per cent of the unit and preparing it for integration with the carbon capture plant.
Corwyn Bruce, the assistant manager of the clean coal project, said the shutdown is a big step towards the completion of the project which is expected in March of 2014. Bruce added like any other shutdown at Boundary Dam, speed will be of the essence as they hope to have the unit back in operation by September.
"It's (the part of the project) that we need to do quickly. Just like the other shutdowns we like to get at it and get it done," he said. "There is going to have to be other generation that takes over where Unit 3 normally is. We have other stuff available to back feed, but the stuff in Estevan is our low cost generators of electricity so we don't like to have them off for long."
Although shutdowns at Boundary Dam are nothing new, Bruce said because of the carbon capture unit, this shutdown has some different elements to it. For starters, the cost is much higher, coming in at $364 million.
"It's probably bigger than any shutdown we have ever done in the Estevan area," Bruce said. "It's rivalled only by when Shand was built which obviously was much bigger than this.
"Normally we come down and we take apart the turbines and do maintenance on them and we go into the boiler and replace the boiler. There are things like that except the turbine generator is going to be brand new, we have to change a whole bunch of equipment that is past its life and needs to be changed so it works with the carbon capture plant and we are doing very expensive upgrades and a refitting of the boiler."
Brown added the amount of manpower needed for the project is also extensive. On the power island, which he describes as everything from the stack in, they will peak at about 650 tradespeople. Along with others still working on the CCS plant, they are expected to peak at 950.
"That is higher (than a normal shutdown). Last year Shand had a major shutdown last fall and we peaked in the 830 range for total manpower."
Brown said their timeline calls for initial testing on some aspects of the system to begin in June while in September they will place the unit back online and begin generating electricity again.
"Because we are changing out so much of the system there at Boundary Dam and changing out the controls and the whole thing, it is probably going to take us in the range of a month to get the unit stable on its own," he said.
"We'll start the unit up, synchronize it to the grid, we'll do commissioning where we take it to full load and back down again and take all the kinks out of it if you will. Then we are going to start the process of starting up the carbon capture plant by emitting flue gas to the plant. That should happen in October."
To prepare for October's start-up of the CCS plant, Brown said testing will be carried out over the summer.
"It's on schedule to be able to integrate with us in October. There are still pieces moving and stuff being constructed but the schedule shows them being complete in time to mesh up with when the power plant is ready to deliver both flue gas and steam to them."
SaskPower estimates the CCS plant will reduce the carbon dioxide emissions out of Unit 3 by 90 per cent or by approximately one million tonnes a year, which is the equivalent of taking 250,000 cars off Saskatchewan roads.
