Representatives from academia and industry from the US and Norway gathered for two days in Washington DC.
The US Department of Energy (DOE) and the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (MPE) have a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on CCS. The Research Council organises meetings with the DOE approximately once a year. The aim is to promote cooperation and joint projects to accelerate the development and implementation of carbon capture and storage.
The meeting is held every two years in Norway and the USA. This year the meeting was held in Washington DC from 31 October to 1 November. In addition to cooperation on capture and storage, topics such as CO2 transport, CDR (carbon dioxide removal) and hydrogen were discussed.
Norway and the US already have good cooperation through joint calls for proposals in the former ACT (Accelerating CCS Technologies) and now CETP (Clean Energy Transition Partnership). Long-term cooperation has been established in technology development at the Mongstad Technology Centre (TCM), and we are also working together through Mission Innovation on both hydrogen and CDR. Norway is a leader in BiCRS (Biomass with Carbon Removal and Storage).
A total of 70 participants were registered for the meeting. Of which 46 participated physically. Ten people from Norway participated physically, while the other 15 from Norway participated virtually until late in the evening Norwegian time. SINTEF, NORCE, Aker Solutions, Baker Hughes, TCM, Gassnova, the Research Council of Norway and MPE were physically represented at the meeting.
There is a lot of activity in this area in the US due to both the 45Q tax incentive and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), both of which were strengthened and passed in the US in 2022.
The agenda, a summary of the meeting with the main conclusions and all presentations can be found here.
Next year’s meeting will be held in Norway. We will inform you about the time and place.
Primo October 2023 the ACT consortium held a successful Workshop in Paris.
The aim of the Workshop was to ensure fruitful knowledge sharing and increase collaboration between the ACT funded projects and engage with other CCUS initiatives and stakeholders. All aligned with the overall ACT ambition to facilitate research and innovation of CO2 capture, transport, utilisation and storage technologies. ACT aims to accelerate and mature CCUS technologies by funding transnational research and innovation projects. Sixteen countries, regions and provinces are working together in ACT with the ambition to fund world class research, development and innovation that can lead to safe and cost effective CCUS technology.
Main focus during the two days in Paris was to share knowledge, experiences and results gained in the ongoing ACT3 projects and the knowledge and the ambitions of ACT4 projects. The event proved to be an excellent opportunity for generating new ideas and building new networks.
Topics were «Building industrial case for CO2 capture», «Building business cases for sustainable CO2 utilisation», «Upscaling to CO2 storage in giga-ton scale» and «Research and innovation needed for CCUS deployment».
The opening session on 4th October was conducted by Gerdi Breembroek, followed by a presentation of French Ministry of Education and representative Xavier Montagne.
By Gerdi Breembroek (.pdf)
The event shown to be an excellent opportunity to improve understanding and take advantage of the increasing momentum for CCS, CCU and CDR.
The venue in Paris was held by Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR).
The presentations from the workshop can be downloaded as soon as ACT have confirmation from the presenter to publish their slides. The list at this link will continuously be updated as soon as they hear from the presenters.
Please see the presentations at ACT Knowledge Sharing Workshop.
ACT is an international initiative to establish CO2 capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) as a tool to combat global warming.
ACT means Accelerating CCS Technologies, and the ambition of the 16 partners is to fund research and innovation projects that can lead to safe and cost-effective CCUS technology.
Since ACT’s start in 2015 participating organizations have allocated 108 million euro in funding for 39 international research, development and innovation (RD&I) projects.
The IEAGHG ExCo had its spring meeting on 17-18 May in Bali in Indonesia with Institute Technology Bandung (ITB) as host.
The meeting was both physical and virtual, with only partial Norwegian participation virtual.
IEAGHG is an observer to the IPCC’s Synthesis Report (SYR) of the 6th Assessment Report (AR6), which was published on 20 March 2023. IEAGHG has contributed several review inputs.
IEAGHG’s summer school was last held at ITB, Bandun, Indonesia in November 2022. Every year, a prize is given to the best students. This year it was a Norwegian student who received an award, Katherine Jimenez from NORCE in addition to Debanjan Chandra from Delft in the Netherlands.
A summary of GHGT-16, which was held in Lyon in October 2022, has been prepared. At the GHGT conferences, it is a tradition that a “Greenman award” is issued to people who have contributed significantly within CCS. At the GHG-16 conference in 2022, Trude Sundset, former director of Gassnova, received the “Greenman award”.
An important part of the IEAGHG meeting is the review of reports that have been published since the last time, those that are underway and the adoption of new reports.
Technical Reports (ieaghg.org)
| Study | Contractor | Report number |
| Integrating CCS in international cooperation and carbon markets under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement | Carbon Counts | 2023-01 |
| Study | Contractor | Study number | Publication date |
| Baseline Techno-Economic Assessment of Small-Scale Carbon Capture for Industrial and Power Systems | Element Energy | 58-12 | May 2023 |
| The Role of Indices in Assessing the Maturity of CCUS Technologies and Readiness for Deployment | Foresight Transitions Ltd | 58-03 | May 2023 |
| Cost-curves for Electrochemical CO2 Conversion Technologies | TNO | 59-03 | June 2023 |
| Components of CCS Infrastructure – Temporary CO2 Storage Options | TNO | 59-05 | June 2023 |
| Co-benefits of CCS Deployment in Industry | Element Energy | 60-02 | June 2023 |
| Power CCUS – Potential for Cost reductions and Improvements | Element Energy | 60-03 | June 2023 |
| Prospective Integration of Geothermal Energy with CCS | BRGM | 60-11 | June 2023 |
| SRMS-Derived Total Storage Resources and Storage Coefficients | BGS | 60-10 | July 2023 |
| Study | Contractor |
| Evolution of Conformance and Containment Risk Over Time in CO2 Storage Projects | BGS |
| Compatibility of CCUS with Net Zero Power | Wood Italiana Srl |
| Reviewing the Environmental and Public Health Implications of CO2 Migration to the Surface or Shallow Subsurface | CSIRO |
| Clean Steel: Environmental and Technoeconomic Outlook of a Disruptive Technology | Element Energy |
| International Standards and Testing for Novel Carbonaceous Building Materials | Imperial Consultants (ICON) |
| Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) for Greenhouse Gas Removals (GGRs) | Carbon Counts |
| CCUS and Public Perception (Stage 1) | Curtin University |
| Comparative analysis of electrolytic hydrogen production technologies with low-carbon (CCS-abated) hydrogen production pathways | Element Energy |
| Seal Integrity Review | CO2CRC |
| Multi-metric Analysis of Dispatchable Gas and Coal Power Plants with CCS in the Energy Storage Industry | Red Vector Ltd |
| New studies approved |
| Transport and storage cost review |
| Review of CO2 storage in basalt, risks and monitoring |
| CO2 transportation & storage availability – expected rates and options for improvements |
| CO2 fiscal metering |
| Critical study on waste-to-(low carbon) hydrogen |
The adopted studies were largely in accordance with the Norwegian prioritization.
Clean Energy Transition Platform (CETP) is a new international collaboration for research and innovation within low-carbon energy technologies, including CCS. Highlights will be shown at the upcoming annual conference 24-25 October.
Funding agencies from more than 30 countries have joined forces in CETP and are setting up joint annual calls for new research and innovation projects. CETP can fund projects with impact for the green energy transition.
All you need to know about the partnership is available at the CETP web site.
A new call for project proposals will be launched in September 2023 and the draft call text is already available here.
The CETPartnership is a multilateral and strategic partnership of national and regional research, development and innovation (RDI) programmes in European Member States and Associated Countries, aiming to boost and accelerate the energy transition and to support the implementation of the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET Plan).
You are all welcome to join the first Annual CETP Conference on 24th & 25th of October. It is designed to be a online gathering of diverse stakeholders with the common goal of fostering a global shift towards clean and sustainable energy systems.
Cement factories can reduce their CO2 emissions considerably by adopting technology for CCS. An international R&D project shows that so-called oxyfuel technology can be the solution of the future.
For several years, the Research Council and Gassnova have collaborated with actors from other countries through the ACT platform. This has resulted in several good international projects. One of the projects is called AC2OCEM, where leading research environments from several countries have studied how oxyfuel technology can provide more cost-effective CO2 capture from cement factories.
The project was led by the University of Stuttgart and has had partners from Norway, Germany, France, Helles and Switzerland. From the Norwegian side, SINTEF and NTNU have played key roles.
Oxyfuel technology means that combustion processes take place with pure oxygen instead of pure air. This will provide a simpler process for CO2 capture.
In the ACT2OCEM project, the use of oxyfuel for cement factories has been studied. Pilot-scale experiments have been carried out and this is combined with numerical modeling and simulation to describe how components in a cement factory can be designed to optimize CO2 capture.
The results from the project show that oxyfuel can be an alternative in the future for cement factories. Techno-economic analyzes and life cycle analyzes from AC2OCEM will be important tools for the design of CO2 capture facilities for cement factories.
More details about the project are available from the project’s website and the Research Council’s project bank.
Facts about the project
In AC2OCem, pilot-scale experiments, as well as analytical studies, have be performed to bring the key components of oxyfuel cement plants to TRL6 with the aim of reducing the time to market of the oxyfuel technology in the cement sector.
AC²OCem has explored the 1st generation oxyfuel technology for retrofitting, focusing on optimization of the oxyfuel calciner operation and advancing the kiln burner technology for combusting up to 100% alternative fuels with high biogenic share to bring this Bio-CCS solution to TRL6.
The experimental investigations were complemented by retrofitability analysis, considering real boundary conditions from two real cement plants. Ultimately, the techno-economic evaluations will prepare a guideline for retrofitting oxyfuel in existing cement plants.
Yet another pilot has started testing of carbon capture on real flue gas from an industrial plant. Returkraft’s waste incineration plant in Kristiansand is testing Air Products’ membrane technology.
“It will be exciting to see how Air Products membranes will manage capturing CO2 from an incineration plant,” says Jørild Svalestuen, Senior Advisor, CLIMIT, on her way to Kristiansand.
Testing Air Products commercial membranes on waste gas from an industrial facility has never been done before. The membranes are typically used to separate methane and CO2 in biogas plants, for example. It will also be an important step for Air Products if these membranes can also be used at industrial facilities to remove CO2 from off-gases. It will be particularly interesting to get knowledge on the capture rate and purity of the CO2 (permeability and selectivity) in this pilot test.
“Returkraft started testing in May and has already run the pilot for several days. Everything is going according to plan,” says project manager Ketil Bergmann, adding that they are extracting the flue gas at a temperature of around 60 0C, which seems to be going very well. “The membranes from Air Products are responding well to the flue gas and capturing of CO2 is ongoing.”
For Returkraft, this pilot project is an important part of their plan to realise a full-scale capture facility in 2030.
Returkraft will gain valuable information both on the operation of the capture facility and integration with existing production. This information can be shared with others once the testing has finished.
Returkraft’s incineration plant is located five kilometres from Kristiansand city centre and started operation in 2010 handling waste from Agder. The owners are made up of the municipalities in Agder, with Kristiansand and Vennesla being the primary owners (49%).
Returkraft handles a total annual amount of general waste and hazardous waste of approximately 130,000 tonnes. The energy from the waste incineration produces 95 GWh of electricity per year. In addition, 250 GWh
of district heating is being produced every year. Annual carbon emissions are around 140-150,000 tonnes of with approximately 55% is biogenic CO2.
Kristiansand Municipality has a goal of reducing its carbon emission by 80% by 2030. To meet this goal, Kristiansand’s largest emissions at source must contribute. Returkraft’s plant has 44 MW, of which 99% of the district heating goes to the citizens of Kristiansand. An advantage of this plant is that it will not be directly affected by being connected to a capture facility. There is already a possibility to provide a capture facility with both heat energy and cooling.
The piloting of CO2 capture at Returkraft could influence how future plants are built. “It is really great,” says Jørild, “that CLIMIT support contribute to reduction of risks and carbon capture costs on the way to full scale CCS. We also want CLIMIT projects to share their experiences and knowledge as far as possible.” Returkraft and the largest waste-to-energy plants in Norway have taken the lead on this and are collaborating to make CCS a reality by sharing their respective experiences and knowledge (KAN – Klimakur for Avfallsforbrenning i Norge (Climate cure for waste incineration in Norway)).
A part of the American company Air Products and Chemicals Inc. (APCI) and Air Products Prism Membranes (APPM), one of the world’s largest manufacturers of membranes.
Air Products is a Kristiansand-based company with long experience in the production of air separation units based on membrane technology. The company was originally founded to meet the needs for inert gas systems for ships but has more recently developed the technology for other uses, such as carbon separation (cf. pilot studies with NTNU’s CO2 membrane technology licenced to Air Products at Norcem, Brevik). Carbon capture is currently one of Air Products focus areas using membrane qualities Air Products has long experience with. Air Products in the United States are developing new membrane-based capture concepts.
Ketil Bergmann is clear that the ball must get rolling if they are to achieve their goal of operating a capture facility by 2030. There is already ongoing work to get the next phase of the plan towards 2030 in place. Bergmann emphasises that the KAN cooperation is helpful. KAN consists of the five largest waste-to-energy plants in Norway. All having their own ongoing CCUS projects and by working together they will find the best possible frameworks and solutions for CCS on waste-to-energy.
Existing flow meters do not meet all technical measurement requirements for measuring the mass flow of CO2 in future large scale CCS chains.
The capture plants must be able to measure how much CO2 is delivered for transport with an accuracy that meets the authorities’ requirements for approval of their emission reductions. For the same reason, storage operators also need accurate measurements of the incoming mass flow of CO2 for storage. Future operators of CCS chains are prioritizing the development of new and better solutions for mass flow measurement. Cignus Instruments develops a new type of mass flow meter with technical advantages compared to the solutions available on the market today.
Several studies conclude that none of the existing technologies for mass flow measurement satisfy all the technical measurement requirements for measuring the mass flow of CO2 in CCS chains. Traditional Coriolis mass flow meters are considered the most accurate and the only technology for direct mass flow measurement, but have general limitations for large pipe diameters, especially at large operating pressures, and the technology is not qualified for subsea installations. Moreover, this technology has significant internal pressure drop, which presents challenges when handling liquids close to the boiling point where a pressure drop will result in a risk of boiling and thus increased measurement error. This is a risk in mass flow measurement of liquids with low boiling points, such as liquid CO2, NH3 and H2.
The technology development is going on in NFR EnergiX IPN project 327715 Cignus Instruments “Mass flow meter for H2 and liquidCO2“. Sintef Energi, Equinor, NEL, TechnipFMC, and TotalEnergies are partners in the project, which has demonstrated the technology at lab scale to EU TRL4.
In October 2022 Cignus got funding from CLIMIT Demo for the project 622129 “Design, construction and installation of prototype Cignus mass flow meter for CO2 testing at Equinor P-Lab”.
“P-Lab” is Equinor’s research facility at Herøya in Porsgrunn, which features a multiphase flow loop. Equinor will run a test campaign with CO2 at “P-Lab” next fall, and Cignus has had the opportunity to test its prototype mass flow meter in this campaign.
The aim is for the project to lift the technology from TRL 4 to TRL6 “validated in relevant industrial environments”.
In the longer term, Cignus’ goal is to develop and qualify the technology for full-scale CCS service, such as in Northern Lights phase 2.
The technology developed by Cignis has several advantages compared to today’s solutions. It is better suited for high pressure, larger pipe dimensions, for subsea operation, and it has a low internal pressure drop. These advantages could translate into a competitive advantage in future CCS markets for large-scale pipeline transport, loading/unloading of ship transport and subsea storage.
Cignus Instruments was started in 2020 to develop proprietary mass flow metering technology, so far, the company’s only business area. The company currently has eight employees, including the founders. The same founders started the company Presens AS in 1996 which developed technology and produced pressure sensors for a global market. Presens was acquired by General Electric/Baker Hughes in 2012.
Today’s technologies do not meet the requirements for mass flow metering of CO2 in future CCS chains. The partners in Northern Lights and other future operators of CCS chains are prioritizing closing this technology gap. With the support of EnergiX, CLIMIT and industry partners, Cignus is developing a solution that can help close this gap.
In order to confront climate challenges, we will need to store significant volumes of CO2. The North Sea has an immense theoretical storage capacity.
There are many technologies to monitor how CO2 flows within a storage site, and it is perfectly possible to implement remediation actions if CO2 start moving away. However, we need a tool that makes it possible to set up a cost-effective system that ensures accurate CO2 monitoring at a low cost.
Through an international R&D project, the University of Bergen created such a tool to monitor CO2 storage sites. Together with researchers from the Netherlands, the UK and the US, a tool has been developed, which could be useful for both the authorities and companies planning for large-scale CO2 storage.
Through the ACTOM project, researchers have studied marine monitoring for offshore CO2 storage projects. National and international regulations and guidelines for CO2 monitoring were also included, as well as societal challenges related to CO2 storage. This is an interdisciplinary project, and participants in the project have backgrounds in law, geology, marine chemistry, mathematics, modelling and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). The main delivery from this project is a simulation tool for designing monitoring programmes for offshore geological storage sites. Procedures for detecting weak signals from a leak in an extremely varied marine environment are central for this new tool. The tool could help operators during the planning phase to design monitoring programmes that are in line with national and international regulations.
Key data about the project
Title: Act on offshore monitoring (ACTOM)
Project manager: Guttorm Alendal, University of Bergen
Partners:
From the US: Los Alamos National Laboratory and University of Texas, Austin
From the UK: Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the University of Dundee
From the Netherlands: TNO
From Norway: University of Bergen, NORCE and OCTIO Environment.
Budget: EUR 2 million
Financing: ACT has contributed EUR 1.5 million, the remainder is own financing from project partners.
RRI is an approach to predict and assess implications and expectations of new technologies based in the humanities and social sciences, a framework which is being increasingly used in marine environmental studies, biotechnology and innovation. This is the first time this approach has been used for CO2 capture and storage. Potential legal conflicts between CO2 storage projects, and between storage projects and other marine environments, are addressed with regard to marine area planning. The simulation tool can also analyse uncertainties and strengths of the planned monitoring programmes. National and international regulations and guidelines and the requirements these set for CO2 monitoring have also been taken into account.
The Clean Energy Transition Partnership (CETP) is setting up a new call for R&D applications. CCS is one of many topics that are prioritized in this call.
The upcoming CETP Call will be published in June and CETP is setting up several events to promote the call. A full overview is available at the CETP web site: https://cetpartnership.eu/events/all
We will in particular recommend three webinars related to CCS:
If you have questions, please contact Aage Stangeland at the Research Council of Norway, ast@rcn.no
The capture and storage of CO2 is seen as one of many solutions to mitigate severe climate change.
The challenge is to make the technology cheap enough, and an exciting research project has developed a tool which makes it easy to assess whether oil and gas wells can be reused for CO2 injection. This could reduce the cost of CO2 storage.
There are many oil and gas wells that could potentially be reused for CO2 injection to permanently store CO2 underground. The aim of the REX-CO2 project was to explore methods and tools to make it easy to assess the suitability of existing wells for CO2 injection. A significant part of the project was made up of experimental laboratory studies, with the emphasis on understanding well integrity and well barriers. Another significant element was the development of an assessment tool that can systematically evaluate a field and its wells for possible reuse for CO2 storage.
REX-CO2 has been funded through ACT (Accelerating CCS Technologies), in which funding agencies from several countries are collaborating on joint calls for funding of research and development projects. TNO (the Netherlands) was the project coordinator. Three Norwegian partners participated in the project, with SINTEF acting as research partner together with the two industrial partners, Equinor and ReStone. Other foreign partners were BGS (UK), IFP-EN (France) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA).
The research in REX-CO2 focused on the interactions between the well materials (cement and steel pipes), with the aim of understanding the system and minimising failure and the risk of leaks. The collaboration between researchers and industrial partners was crucial to gathering new knowledge and expertise.
The main result from REX-CO2 is a tool that makes it possible to evaluate the reuse of wells for CO2 injection. The tool can be downloaded without any cost from the project website.
The project also generated new knowledge of CO2-resistant cement for use in CO2 wells. It also enhanced our understanding of materials that can provide good well integrity.
The project started in 2019 and was completed towards the end of 2022.
