Membranes for CO₂ Capture at the Cement Industry, MemCCC

The main objective with the project has been to design and construct a test pilot based on hollow-fibre Fixed-Site-Carrier (FSC) membranes, for long term performance testing on real cement process conditions at Norcem Brevik.

The project has been a sequel to the Phase I membrane program, part of the CLIMIT-funded, “Norcem CO₂ Capture Project”, ref. no. 221323. Based on knowledge achieved in phase I, the main objective has been to demonstrate and techno-economically qualify stable, high-performance and durable CO₂ capture from cement plant flue gas with FSC membranes.

The project has been divided into two main parts; 1) field testing on real cement flue gas conditions and 2) qualification of full scale carbon capture based on cases defined in the existing Benchmark Study (ref. 221323).

Project partners were Norcem, HeidelbergCement and ECRA where Norcem has been the applicant and the project manager.

The technology partners are the membrane separation company Air Products (Kristiansand), the membrane R&D group of the university NTNU (Trondheim), with subcontractors the research institute Sintef and on site representative and technology advisor DNV GL (Sandefjord office).

The project period has been from August 2015 to July 2017. The project has been conducted according to project scope and budget.

The Phase II testing was used with the same fixed-site-carrier membrane (poly-sulfone membrane with a top layer of polyvinylamine, PVAm) but now processed as hollow fibers. Air products provided a high quality test pilot and six months, successfully test program was conducted. The main focus of MemCCC was durability testing and predicting of the membrane life time, which was estimated to 5 years.

Conclusion is that further optimization of the design is necessary. Air Products has signed an exclusive license for further development of the technology and as a commercial partner, Air Products need to conduct own pilot testing for maturing the technology and to move it forward from the current TRL level of 5.