C-Capture, which is working with Drax Group on a bioenergy and carbon capture and storage (BECCS) project at Drax Power Station, will be using the facilities at the Tiller facility, operated by SINTEF’s institute “SINTEF Industry”, to validate its technology and provide comparative analysis with alternative carbon capture technologies. The R&D work will start later this year.
SINTEF is one of Europe’s largest research institutes, with multidisciplinary specialist expertise in the fields of technology, natural and social sciences. SINTEF, with headquarters in Trondheim Norway, is an independent foundation focusing on innovation through development and research for industrial and public sectors, both in Norway and abroad.
Scientists at SINTEF will be working closely with C-Capture and Drax’s Innovation teams to carry out this work over the next six months. C-Capture will send equipment and solvent to Norway, and the Tiller facility will switch to burning biomass for the trials, in order for the Tiller facility to carry out a comparative analysis with C-Capture’s unique solvent. Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) emissions and other aspects of solvent performance will also be monitored.
The contract to carry out the trial at SINTEF was signed at C-Capture’s facility in Leeds by Caspar Schoolderman, Chief Operating Officer and Project Lead at C-Capture, and Duncan Akporiaye, a Director in SINTEF.
Caspar Schoolderman said: “We’re delighted to be working with SINTEF, a world-renowned facility, towards an independent validation of our technology.”
SINTEF’s Duncan Akporiaye agreed: “The work that we will carry out at our facility at Tiller aims to provide independent validation for C-Capture and Drax’s work to date. The two companies have made great progress with their BECCS project. A large part of SINTEF’s R&D work over the next six months is to accelerate their work towards a full-scale BECCS.”
Jason Shipstone, Executive Vice President of Innovation at Drax Group, which is part funding the work with SINTEF, added: “This is another important step in the process to understand the potential for scaling up our successful BECCS pilot project, enabling Drax to become the world’s first negative emissions power station and the anchor for the UK’s first zero carbon industrial cluster in the Humber region.”
Ugochukwu Edwin Aronu, a SINTEF Scientist and Programme Manager for the project, said: “It is exciting working together with C-Capture and Drax at the Tiller facility on carbon capture from bioenergy processes to bring C-Capture’s carbon capture technology towards commercialisation. We look forward to sharing knowledge and expertise in this programme to advance this technology.”
The agreement follows the recent £5m grant awarded to C-Capture by the UK Government to further develop its understanding of how its technology could be scaled up at Drax Power Station in North Yorkshire, for it to become the world’s first negative emissions power station in the 2020s – effectively removing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from atmosphere at the same time as electricity is being produced. The grant was awarded in June 2019.