Aker Solutions has won a contract to perform the world’s first tests for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from a cement production plant.
The CO2 technology company won the award from Norcem, in cooperation with the European Cement Research Academy (ECRA). It did not disclose the contract’s value.
Aker Solutions says it will perform long-term testing on the actual flue gas to select the best chemical solvent for high-content CO2 flue gas at Norcem’s plant in Brevik, Norway. Aker Solutions’ in-house developed Mobile Test Unit (MTU) will perform the tests. The MTU is a CO2 capture plant that includes all processes and functions found in a large-scale commercial plant.
The companies say the project results will provide Norcem and its parent company HeidelbergCement information for future decision-making on reducing CO2 emissions and help the European cement industry understand the use of technology for future full-scale CO2 capture from cement production plants.
ECRA, a trade group whose mission is to advance sustainable development in the cement industry, supports and conducts research activities on cement production. Its members — more than 40 global cement producers — picked Norcem Brevik as the site for ECRA operational CO2-capture test project.
The project is supported and partly financed by Climit, a Norwegian research program for accelerating the commercialization of carbon capture and storage.
Gas and coal power plants equipped with carbon capture, transport and storage technology have the potential to be cost competitive with other low-carbon power generation in the UK by the early 2020s, according to a government task force report.
Earlier this week, Air Products announced it is now operating a Department of Energy demonstration project that will capture about 1 million tons of carbon dioxide in an enhanced oil recovery project in Texas.