Immingham power station

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Immingham power station (also known as Conoco Philips Power Station) is a gas-fired combined heat and power (CHP) plant in North Lincolnshire, England.

Location

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Project details

The £350m plant, which is owned by ConocoPhillips, is sited within the Humber Refinery, providing electricity and heat for the refinery's processes. Excess steam goes to the neighbouring Lindsey Oil Refinery with excess electricity exported to the National Grid.[1]

The power station is situated on the south bank of the Humber Estuary, north of the town of Immingham. Its generating capacity of 730 megawatts makes it Europe's largest CHP plant. The station has been operated by energy company ConocoPhillips since it opened in 2004.[1] The station was sold to Vitol on July 23, 2013.[2]

History

Plans for the power station began in 1998, when ways to provide power for both refineries were investigated. Due to the low price of electricity when the designs for the station began in 2004, the plant would have not been economically viable unless tax-incentives were given by the UK government. These were in the form of exemption from the UK Climate Change Levy and greater offsets against tax for the plant's depreciation. It was opened on November 1 2004 by Margaret Beckett.[1]

In October 2006, ConocoPhillips approved[3] a £210m extension of the plant to produce 1,180MW. The new Phase II plant is expected to be opened in the summer of 2009, producing an extra 450MW. It will consist of one 285MWe gas turbine, one HRSG and a 200MWe steam turbine.

The power station trades as Immingham CHP LLP.

Specification

Two 260MW General Electric Frame 9 (9001FA) gas turbines generate electricity with the exhaust gas from each heating a Nooter Eriksen heat recovery steam generator. The steam from each these HRSGs transfers to a steam turbine. The two 115MWe steam turbines are built by Franco Tosi Meccanica[4] based in Legnano in the Italian province of Milan. There are also two auxiliary boilers. Each boiler can provide 50% of the steam needs for each refinery. It normally exports around a minimum of 150MW to the National Grid, but this can be increased depending on the needs of the Grid and the two refineries. The plant is about 70% thermally efficient. The refinery operations need around 25MW of electricity. Each steam turbine uses a maximum of 300 tonnes of steam per hour. Around 190 tonnes per hour of steam goes to the Humber Refinery, and around 160 tonnes per hour goes to the Lindsey Refinery.[1]

Carbon Capture and Storage Bid

The Immingham power station has been proposed by ConocoPhillips as the site for a Carbon Capture and Storage demonstration plant. In a presentation on behalf of ConocoPhillips, Cal Cooper noted that there are approximately 80 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide emissions within 50 miles, approximately 14% of UK emissions. He identified 15 million tonnes of liquid 15 million tonnes of capacity which could be transported by a 28" pipeline via a new pipeline to to depleted gas reservoir.[5]

Articles and resources

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Inaugurating Immingham: Europe's biggest CHP", Modern Power Systems, November 10, 2004.
  2. "Vitol completes acquisition of Immingham power plant," Vitol press release, 2013
  3. ConocoPhillips, "ConocoPhillips to Expand Europe’s Largest Combined Heat and Power Station", Media Release, October 20, 2006.
  4. Franco Tosi Meccanica
  5. Cal Cooper, "Opportunities and Challenges for CCS Projects", ConocoPhillips, November 7, 2007.

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External resources

External articles

Wikipedia also has an article on Immingham power station. This article may use content from the Wikipedia article under the terms of the GFDL.