London-based Carbon Clean has landed a key contract to carry out front-end engineering and design work on a carbon-capture facility planned for the Storegga-led Acorn project in Scotland.
Due on stream in the mid-2020s, the initial phase of the Acorn project will capture carbon dioxide from industrial facilities in Scotland and store this waste gas in reservoirs beneath the North Sea, maximising the use of existing oil and gas infrastructure.
The CO2 capture plant will be located at St Fergus, the terminal point for multiple North Sea gas pipelines and an industrial complex in its own right.
Carbon Clean will work with Aberdeen-based Wood on engineering, process design and construction planning for the carbon-capture process unit.
Acorn CCS is currently in the detailed engineering and design phase of the project.
At St Fergus, the captured CO2, together with CO2 volumes from other emitters, will be transported and permanently stored offshore at identified sites that could be storing 5 million to 10 million tonnes per annum of CO2 by 2030.
If this potential is realised, it would equate to at least half the CO2 emissions set out in the UK government’s 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution by 2030.
Commenting on the award, Storegga chief executive Nick Cooper said: “It is excellent working with a group as innovative as Carbon Clean. Like us, they started as a small entrepreneurial business and have used UK Innovation Funds to create organisations that are now ready to significantly contribute to the UK energy transition.”
Acorn’s partners are lead developer Storegga (via subsidiary Pale Blue Dot Energy), Shell and Harbour Energy.
Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the UK’s energy & climate change minister, added: “Pale Blue Dot and Carbon Clean … will help the UK go further to deploy critically important carbon capture and hydrogen infrastructure that will help British industries to decarbonise in a way that’s competitive and projects jobs.”
Clean Carbon was established in and recently signed a memorandum of understanding with US player BayoTech, an on-site hydrogen production company based in New Mexico, to explore commercial opportunities targeted at hydrogen and carbon capture deployment.
The two players plan to bring on stream a demonstration facility in North America by the end of next year.
Last year, Chevron, Equinor and Marubeni were among the oil and gas players to invest in Carbon Clean which was established in 2009 by Aniruddha Sharma and Prateek Bumb, while they were studying at the Indian Institute of Technology.
The company’s technology has been deployed at more than 10 locations globally and is in use at the world’s largest industrial-scale CCUS plant in Tuticorin, a city on the coast of Tamil Nadu, India.
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