A pulverized coal plant built to operate more cleanly doesn't necessarily sound like a "clean coal" plant to me, though there's no denying it is cleaner. SaskPower announced today it has partnered with Babcock & Wilcox Canada and Air Liquide to jointly develop a CO2 separation technology for its Clean Coal Project.

SaskPower is studying the feasibility of building a 300-megawatt coal plant that would burn pulverized lignite coal that has been locally mined. But the plant would use a technological process called "oxyfuel" that removes nitogren from all of the combustion air, allowing the boiler to operate in the absense of nitrogen. Gases leaving the boiler become easier to purify, compress and sequester.

The company estimates that it would be able to capture 90 per cent of the CO2 released from the plant -- i.e. 8,000 tonnes of CO2 a day could be sequestered in underground deep saline aquifers or sold in the market for enhanced oil recovery. The project has an estimated pricetag of $1.5 billion, and if it goes ahead, it would be the first "advanced clean coal power plant" of its kind on a utility scale, SaskPower claims. (A claim I have a difficult time believing).

A decision on whether to proceed or not will apparently be made in mid-2007. If it gets a green light, the plant would become operational in 2011. The Energy Blog had a great posting last week comparing cleaner pulverized coal and coal gasification technologies. The latter is less tested and considered more expensive, but it's much more deserving of the label "clean coal." The posting refers to a recent TIME/CNN article on the issue.