U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced at the National Coal Council that funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be used to expand and accelerate the commercial deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology at the Cholla Power Plant in St. Joseph, Arizona, (near Holbrook) according to a story in the Charleston (WV) Gazette. [right, Cholla plant location. Credit, Westcarb]
Arizona Public Services Modification will get $70.6 million to "permit the existing algae-based carbon mitigation project to expand testing with a coal-based gasification system. The goal is to produce fuels from domestic resources while reducing atmospheric CO2 emissions. The overall process will minimize production of carbon dioxide in the gasification process to produce a substitute natural gas (SNG) from coal. The host facility for this project is the Cholla Power Plant."
The APS Cholla project is one of "two existing industrial and innovative reuse projects, previously selected via competitive solicitations, that will be expanded to accelerate scale-up and field testing."