The Carbon Capture and Sequestration system put into Boundary Dam's unit 3 as a part of efforts to limit the coal plant's CO2 production met with some troubles over 2021.

The system is set up to try and capture the CO2 that is normally emitted during power generating operations.

Those were interrupted over 2021 by a pair of outages, as Saskpower Spokesperson Joel Cherry explains.

"2021 started off strong at the plant, we were happy with the capture rate we were seeing there. We had a planned outage in June to do some standard maintenance there and we're pleased with the operation of the plant coming out of that. Unfortunately," said Cherry, "We did have an unplanned outage after that caused by a component in the compressor motor."

Specifically, a piece of the compressor's engine broke, which meant operations had to be stalled while that was repaired.

While that was repaired, another issue soon sprang up.

"Unfortunately afterward there was an unrelated issue," said Cherry, "The cooler on the compressor...had a leak. We did some in-depth investigations to find the cause of that and we had a couple of intermittent outages as a result of that leak."

They're still attempting to fully fix that leak, with Cherry saying that they're hoping to start up operations soon.

Those outages meant that the capture rate - which is the amount of carbon the system captures compared to how much is overall produced - fell drastically from what they were aiming for.

"The absolute maximum the facility was built to capture is 90% of all emissions produced by the facility. We have better, more sustainable operations when we operate the facility closer to 75-80%," said Cherry, "So that's our target capture rate."

In 2021, thanks to the outages, that capture rate was reported at around 44%.

Cherry says that once that leak is all fixed, 2022 should be looking like a better year.

"I think there's a small planned outage for October, but other than that we don't have any more planned outages for Boundary Dam or carbon capture," said Cherry, "So our focus now is to get it up and running safely and to get some good capture in 2022.