BPA applauds $1.4M DOE grant for bioenergy carbon capture project

In a new round of grants announced by the U.S. Department of Energy, CMS Enterprises was awarded more than $1.4 million dollars to execute an initial design engineering study to retrofit the Filer City Power Plant in Michigan to enable the facility to capture carbon.

Following the retrofit, the plant will be able to fire 100 percent sustainably sourced biomass and implement post-combustion CO2 capture technology developed by ION Clean Energy. CMS Enterprises also plans to team up with Sargent & Lundy LLC for the study.

“BPA would like to congratulate CMS Enterprises on their recent grant award from DOE,” said Carrie Annand, Biomass Power Association’s executive director. “The study is a key step toward retrofitting the plant and will be a major upgrade to the facility. Shifting to a 100 percent renewable biomass fuel and implementing high-tech carbon capture technology will significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions at the site. Biomass technology is a critical part of a low carbon future and we are excited to see the Filer City Power Plant take this important step forward.”

The Filer City Power Plant first began commercial operations in 1990 and was designed to be fueled by coal, pet coke, tire-derived fuel, and wood waste with a rated output of 60 MW and 50,000 pounds of process steam per hour.

The grant to CMS was announced by DOE as part of more than $131 million dollars for 33 research and development projects to advance the wide-scale deployment of carbon management technologies to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution.

This project is included as part of selected carbon dioxide removal projects supporting the cost and performance goals of DOE’s Carbon Negative Shot initiative, which calls for innovation in pathways that will capture CO2 from the atmosphere and permanently store it.