The UK's second biggest coal-fired power station made headlines in May as the first in the country to start capturing its carbon dioxide emissions. The project at Longannet, the 40-year-old plant on the Firth of Forth, puts ScottishPower at the forefront of a technology widely seen as crucial for the future of coal - and the climate.rnA 'small-scale replica' of a full-scale post-combustion carbon capture plant is now running until the end of the year, recovering CO_2 from flue gases. The aim is to test the chemistry of how different amine solutions absorb the CO_2 the amount of energy needed to heat the gas-saturated solution to drive off the CO_2 and capture it, and how many times the amines can be recycled around this process. Operating on just 1MW of Longannet's total net capacity of 2.3GW, the technology is processing 1,000 cubic metres of exhaust gas per hour.
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