On December 4, 2009, American Electric Power was notified by the U.S. Department of Energy that it was selected to receive funding through the Clean Coal Power Initiative Round 3 to pay part of the costs of installing the nation's first commercial-scale carbon dioxide capture and storage system on its Mountaineer coal-fired power plant in New Haven, West Virginia.
AEP will begin negotiating terms with the DOE to receive $334 million to assist with the installation of the system that will use a chilled ammonia process to capture at least 90 percent of the carbon dioxide from 235 megawatts of the plant's 1,300 megawatts of capacity.
The captured carbon dioxide, approximately 1.5 million metric tons per year, will be treated and compressed, then injected into suitable geologic formations for permanent storage approximately 1.5 miles below the surface. The system will begin commercial operation in 2015, according to the company's application for funding.
AEP and Alstom began operating a smaller-scale validation of the technology in September at the Mountaineer plant. That system captures up to 90 percent of the carbon dioxide from a slipstream of flue gas equivalent to 20 megawatts of generating capacity.