E.ON, Siemens to build pilot carbon capture plant

FRANKFURT, Feb 19 (Reuters) - German utility E.ON and industrial group Siemens said on Thursday they would build a pilot plant to capture carbon dioxide emissions from coal burning.

It is due to start operations in the summer, it said.

It will be built at E.ON's Staudinger power station near Hanau east of Frankfurt, and will be tested in a hard-coal fired unit, Staudinger's block 5. Costs were not disclosed.

'The two companies are thus pushing further ahead with the development of a process geared toward climate-compatible power generation,' a joint statement said.

The move is in line with efforts around the globe to produce almost carbon-free power to help fight climate change caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels.

The pilot plant will be run with part of the flue gas from Staudinger's unit 5 between mid-2009 and the end of 2010.

The process called carbon capture and storage (CCS), which supporters hope will safeguard coal and gas use to produce power while sparing the environment, needs testing before it can be deployed in large plants for full commercial use.

The two partners said out of a number of different procedures for CCS, they had opted for so-called post-combustion-capture, developed by Siemens. It entails removing CO2 with cleaning agents before gases are discharged into the atmosphere.

One CO2 is removed, it is buried in porous rocks underground.

Like sector peers, E.ON plans on using industrial-scale CCS starting in 2020, when the European Union requires coal plants to use the process if they want to continue to generate power.

E.ON's generation unit, E.ON Kraftwerke, operates 50 blocks of a total capacity of 14,000 megawatts. Under long-term investment programmes, it currently aims for 20 new plants with a capacity totalling 15,000 MW.

(Reporting by Vera Eckert; editing by Sue Thomas) Keywords: EON SIEMENS/CARBON ([e-mail]; [phone]; Reuters Messaging: [e-mail]) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.