Beulah, ND: 1984 954mw Antelope Valley Power Station and Dakota Gasification Co.

Power Plant: (Satellite)

Gas Plant: (Satellite)

"Unit 1: 477.0 MW (1984), Unit 2: 477.0 MW (1986)" $100s of millions of dollars was planned around 2010 to be spent on a CO2 capture demonstration project. [gem]

The gasification plant already had a pipeline that carries CO2 to Canada for enhanced oil recovery. So the problem of what to do with the CO2 was solved. Nonetheless, the project was cancelled in Dec 2010. [sequestration]

I have not been able to determine how much money was spent before the cancellation.

It may be that it never got past the "study" stage. [geos]

The power plant is on the left and the gasification plant is on the right. Both of them get their coal from the nearby Freedom Coal Mine, the largest lignite mine in the US.

Cam V B (Vontank), Feb 2023, rotated and cropped

This power plant burns the lignite fines from the adjacent syngas plant. The fines are a waste product of gasification because they are particles that are too small for gasification. [BasinElectric] Small pieces of coal is an advantage for power plants because they pulverize the coal into a fine powder.

lignite
"A rule of thumb is that one megawatt of capacity produces enough electricity to serve 800 customers." This plant can serve more customers than are found in North Dakota.
The plant was built with a bag house and a scrubber. They added equipment to reduce the formation of nitrogen oxides and to capture mercury.

NDtourism
They pride themselves on having a clean plant and offer tours.

 

Bill Vaughn Jr. posted
Antelope

Since they are mine-mouth plants, they have some big vehicles for hauling the coal from the mine strips.

2:28 video @ 0:24

Dakota Gasification Company

DakotaGas-gasification
"America has more than an 800-year supply of coal that is currently accessible and economically feasible to recover. Use of this abundant domestic resource is being challenged around the globe. The Great Plains Synfuels Plant is a model of how coal can be used to produce energy in an efficient and environmentally responsible manner. Each day the Synfuels Plant converts about 18,000 tons of lignite coal into an average 150 million cubic feet of synthetic natural gas for home heating and electricity generation."
The plant captures about half of the CO2 byproduct. As mentioned, a pipeline ships the CO2 to Canada to help recover oil.
[The "about half" fact comes from here.]

HOW ENHANCED OIL RECOVERY WORKS

The gas in the pipeline is at very high pressure (about 152 bar), which makes it a supercritical fluid. Supercritical fluids are gases under such high pressures that the vapor (gas) phase becomes as dense as the liquid phase. Supercritical fluids have high density, but flow easily like gases, so are ideal for transporting through pipelines. The Weyburn oil field has a total of 720 wells. The vertical wells were drilled in a 9-spot grid pattern – eight producing wells in a square around an injection well and typically have a spacing of around 150 meters. The high pressure CO2 is pumped into 37 injection wells, helping oil to flow towards 145 active producer wells.

The level of purity of the CO2 supplied is ideal for use in enhanced oil recovery. This is because CO2 dissolves more readily into oil when small impurities are present. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S), which makes up 1% of the injection gas, is particularly beneficial at helping CO2 to mix with oil.

When CO2 supercritical fluid is pumped at high pressure into the reservoir, the CO2 mixes with the oil, causing it to swell and become less viscous. The swelling forces oil out of the pores in the rocks, so that it can flow more easily. Water is pumped into the injection wells, alternating with CO2, to push the released oil towards producer wells. Some CO2 comes back out of the ground at producer wells; this is recycled, compressed and re-injected along with gas from the pipeline.

It is predicted that the CO2 enhanced oil recovery operation will enable an additional 130 million barrels of oil to be produced, extending the field's commercial life by around 25 years. It is also anticipated that about 20 million tons of CO2 will be injected and become permanently stored 1,400 meters underground over the lifetime of this project.

Although using CO2 to increase oil production is not new, prior to the Dakota Gas and Cenovus Energy project, the CO2 primarily came from natural sources. Because the naturally occurring ground source CO2 was removed and injected into the geological structure, there was no net reduction in CO2 emissions in the atmosphere. Dakota Gas is unique in that its CO2, which would have previously been emitted into the atmosphere, is permanently injected into a geological sink, thereby reducing the total annual emissions of CO2.

[DakotaGas-capture]

ibew1593
"The Synfuels Plant is the only commercial-scale coal gasification plant in the United States that manufactures natural gas. It is also the cleanest energy plant operating in the state of North Dakota."

DOE
"In addition to the production of SNG [synthetic natural gas], the plant also produces high purity carbon dioxide (CO2), which is distributed through a pipeline to end users in Canada for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations. The plant also produces and sells anhydrous ammonia, as well as the following byproducts: ammonium sulfate, krypton, xenon, dephenolized cresylic acid, liquid nitrogen, phenol, and naphtha, most of the last of which is burned as fuel in plant boilers.
"A total of 16,000 tons per day (tpd) of lignite are gasified in 14 Lurgi Mark IV gasifiers. The gasifiers themselves are cylindrical pressure vessels which are 40 feet high and 13 feet in diameter. Oxygen (O2), produced by an air separation unit (ASU), and steam are fed into the gasifiers beneath the coal reaction bed, resulting in combustion temperatures reaching 2,200°F. The hot combustion gases break the coal and steam down to form compounds containing carbon, hydrogen, sulfur, nitrogen and other elements, forming a raw gas which exits the gasifiers. Meanwhile, any ash resulting from the gasification process exits through the bottom of the gasifier.
"Nine permits from the Federal government, 31 from the state government, and 14 from the local government were required for construction and operation of the synfuels plant. The Federal and local permits were mostly geared towards construction, requiring little monitoring after operation began. The state permits, on the other hand, required efforts by plant personnel to establish monitoring requirements, obtain future permits, and to negotiate and renew existing permits.
"Maximizing system reliability was also necessary in order to insure financing. This was done by designing two product trains into the plant, so if one was ever down, the second could remain running. This would ensure that at least half the plant was operating at all times. Total cost for design and construction of the plant was roughly $2 billion. Construction began in 1981."
Soon after the plant came online in 1984, the price of natural gas dropped. The DOE helped save the plant, and the plant continues to operate and improvements have been added.
It "remains the only coal-to-SNG facility in the United States."

The DOE recovered its $1.5b loan by 2010. But fracking has caused financial problems. Mitsubishi Power Americas agreed to buy it in Aug 2021. It plans to convert it to a hydrogen producing plant. This should save the jobs of 500 employees. [apnews]

AmmoniaEnergy, cropped

AmmoniaEnergy-pdf, p22
(Production of 1,100 tons/day of anhydrous ammonia was added in 1997, and the CO2 pipeline was added in 2000. p4)

I recognize anhydrous ammonia as the product that many farmers use as fertilizer. That upgrade was important because Mitsubishi Power Americas views the plant as an ammonia plant instead of a SNG plant.

AmmoniaEnergy
"Bakken Energy, Mitsubishi Power Americas and MHA Nation have signed a new MoU for the redevelopment of the Great Plains Synfuel Plant: an existing ammonia production facility (>400,000 tonnes per year) near Beulah, North Dakota. The $2 billion facility will be renamed the Great Plains Hydrogen Hub, and is expected to be operational by 2027, producing 348,000 tonnes per year of hydrogen via ATR and CCS."
Continue Reading

In the late 1970s, experts were predicting that by the 1990s, there would be no natural gas available! [0:54] I never realized how important fracking was for our gas supply.

9:41 video @ 1:15
This video describes more products than the above references listed.