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Collaboration key to build pipeline of opportunities on global scale

CLEAN TECH The Valorisation Carbone Québec project aims to demonstrate carbon dioxide capture and beneficial reuse at the large-scale industrial facilities of Québec’s main industries, namely manufacturing and mining

CLEAN TECH The Valorisation Carbone Québec project aims to demonstrate carbon dioxide capture and beneficial reuse at the large-scale industrial facilities of Québec’s main industries, namely manufacturing and mining

28th April 2017

     

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Quebec-based carbon-capture technology developer CO2 Solutions president and CEO Evan Price expects its collaboration with global consulting and engineering firm Hatch to be central to the success of its Valorisation Carbone Quebec (VCQ) project and instrumental in building the company’s commercial pipeline of opportunities on a global scale.

“By combining our technology with Hatch’s expertise, we will be able to accelerate business development and deliver projects to the satisfaction of a broad and diverse customer base.”

In March, CO2 Solutions and Hatch announced a collaborative agreement in which Hatch will act as engineering services provider to the VCQ project.

The C$15-million VCQ project, sponsored by the Quebec regional government, aims to demonstrate carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and beneficial reuse at the large-scale industrial facilities of Quebec’s main industries namely manufacturing, power generation and mining.

The VCQ project also aims to support the development of second-generation reuse applications such as the production and sale of biofuels.

Hatch, which specialises in the design and realisation of major industrial engineering projects, will collaborate on delivering carbon-capture systems integrating CO2 Solutions’ low-cost, environmentally benign, enzymatic technology in large industrial environments.

Within these projects, CO2 Solutions will license its proprietary technology and Hatch will provide its engineering and project delivery expertise, enabling CO2 Solutions to reach the objectives of the VCQ project.

“We recognise that sustainability requires the optimisation of environmental, social and economic outcomes and is at the core of how Hatch delivers value to our clients as a socially responsible company. This collaboration with CO2 Solutions supports the Hatch goal to plan, design and implement projects with our clients that focus on sustainable value creation,” says Hatch CEO John Bianchini.

CO2 Solutions Technology
Conventional technology used for the capture and production of pure CO2 is primarily based on the use of chemical amine solvents such as monoethanolamine and piperazine, according to explanations on the CO2 Solutions website.

The company

states that these solvents require significant amounts of valuable, high-grade process heat for solvent regeneration, creating an inefficient process with high operating costs.
Additionally, it says conventional amine solvents suffer from significant operational and environmental issues including degradation, toxic aerosol emissions, sensitivity to flue gas contaminants and corrosive agents.

CO2 Solutions advocates its technology as the solution to these challenges by employing the most powerful known catalyst for carbon management, the enzyme carbonic anhydrase (CA), which is most commonly used by living organisms during respiration.

In an industrial system, CA can be used as a catalyst to dramatically accelerate simple and benign salt solutions, resulting in rapid CO2 absorption kinetics and significantly reduced energy consumption. The technology is also designed for use within the existing solvent gas scrubbing architecture for plant retrofit.

CO2 Solutions developed a high-performance CA enzyme named 1T1. According to the company, the 1T1 enzyme has demonstrated catalytic performance that considerably surpasses that of the best enzymes currently available as well as those used to date by CO2 Solutions.

1T1 was developed with the financial assistance of the Canadian government’s Industrial Research Assistance Programme.

Based on the developments observed thus far, this enzyme process has presented several significant advantages. “The costs associated with the capture, sequestration and reuse of carbon using this enzyme are far lower than the costs associated with conventional processes, which require significant amounts of energy.” Moreover, the technology is perfectly adapted to carbon capture from any source of combustion gas containing carbon dioxide.

Oil-Related Application and Implementation
CO2-based enhanced oil recovery is the practice of injecting pure CO2 into an ageing oil well to repressurise the well and temporarily increase its production, notes CO2 Solutions.
In the process, CO2 mixes with crude oil during the miscible phase. The lower viscosity, combined with the increased pressure, ensures that crude oil flows to production wells. This is similar to the concept of a CO2 and soda mixture released from a shaken fizzy cool drink bottle.

CO2 Solutions states that it has a particular interest in the opportunity presented by the Alberta oil sands, which is the fastest growing source of carbon emissions in Canada.
Both industry and government are focused on ways to reduce emissions from the oil sands, using carbon capture and sequestration technology, but without the prohibitive costs of conventional techniques.

The company notes that its technology can be used for carbon capture in situ, as well as at heavy oil upgrading operations.

Opportunities Going Forward

In its half-year report released in December, CO2 Solutions cites work by researchers at Oxford University, which shows that emissions from existing power sector assets, if operated to the end of their normal economic life, will exceed the cumulative emissions budget consistent with halting global average temperature rise to 1.5 ºC, as agreed to at the twenty-first Conference of the Parties (COP21) held in Paris in 2015.

The report further noted that, to meet the COP21 resolutions, additional effort is required to develop techniques to capture and securely store carbon, adding that the company, “believes that it is very well positioned to capitalise on the convergence between the carbon tax associated with [emissions] and the cost of carbon capture”.

CO2 Solutions senior VP Thom Skinner says that the agreement with Hatch will lead to CO2 Solutions’ technology being implemented in industrial projects throughout the world, adding that the company, “has already entered into discussions with a number of entities regarding technology licensing opportunities beyond North America.”

Hatch, as an implementing partner with Southern African offices in Gaborone, Botswana, and Cape Town and Johannesburg, in South Africa, may, in future, implement CO2 Solutions’ technology at African industrial operations.

Edited by Tracy Hancock
Creamer Media Contributing Editor

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