"This is a very exciting project," says Jim Marston, the State Climate Initiatives Director of Environmental Defense, who led a well-publicized fight earlier this year against conventional power plants proposed by TXU. "Using gasification to produce synthetic natural gas is innovative in itself, but Hunton is increasing the efficiency of the facility in a dramatic way by using heat that would otherwise be wasted to make steam." Marston complimented Dow leaders for their active participation in this project, adding: "I like people who think outside the box while finding ways to save money and reduce emissions at the same time."
The Hunton Energy SNG project at Dow Chemical´s Oyster Creek facility in Texas is slated to produce 180 million cubic feet per day of SNG, and will use steam turbines to generate additional power from its byproduct steam. Innovative processes in Hunton´s gasification system will capture 100% of the CO2 emissions from the facility, which will be the equivalent size of a 1200-megawatt power plant.
"This agreement with Hunton Energy is an example of how Dow is pursuing diverse sources of energy as part of our overall strategy to mitigate rising feedstock and energy costs," said Rich Wells, vice president of Energy for Dow Chemical. "As an added benefit, the process used to produce the steam consumed by Dow will capture CO2 emissions to be sold for enhanced oil recovery use. By switching from our site-produced steam to this new technology offered by Hunton, we will be reducing Dow´s CO2 emissions in Freeport and thereby reinforcing our publicly stated Climate Change sustainability goal to reduce the company´s greenhouse gas emissions by more than 20 percent by 2015." ...
State Senator Kip Averitt (R-Waco), Chair of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources said, "I´ve been impressed by the private sector´s ability to provide innovative solutions to many of the problems we face, and this project embodies many of the ultra-clean energy concepts we sought to incentivize through a bill I sponsored and helped pass this past session."
