Case study follows liquefied onboard CO2 from capture to reuse

The Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD) has released its first report on Project CAPTURED, a pilot that demonstrated the full value chain for onboard captured carbon dioxide, from shipboard capture to industrial utilisation in China.

Speaking at the headquarters of IMO as a guest speaker at the Technical Seminar on Onboard Carbon Capture and Storage (OCCS) Systems in London on 11 September 2025, GCMD chief executive Professor Lynn Loo explained why downstream utilisation must be considered alongside capture technology. “What I would like to do … is to focus on what happens to that CO2 once you have captured it; how do you offload it and then transport it … to the off taker?”

The pilot, completed on 25 June 2025, involved Evergreen Marine Corp’s 14,000-TEU container ship Ever Top, equipped with Shanghai Qiyao Environmental Technology Co., Ltd. (SMDERI-QET)’s onboard OCCS system. Exhaust gas was processed during the voyage and 25.44 tonnes of liquefied CO2 was offloaded ship-to-ship to Zhoushan Dejin Shipping Co., Ltd.’s Dejin 26, a 500-m³ CO2 carrier. The CO2 was then transferred by truck to Baorong Environmental Co., Ltd. in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, where it was mineralised with steel slag to produce precipitated calcium carbonate and post-carbonated slag.

Professor Loo emphasised that the pilot sought to address multiple objectives. “We wanted to understand the operational and safety challenges of ship-to-ship liquefied CO2 offloading ... identify and address regulatory barriers,” she said, adding the pilot was to, “Showcase how the CO2 can be integrated into existing industrial CO2 utilisation pathways, and … quantify the greenhouse gas emissions abatement”.

She said: “We sampled its quality at each stage,” noting purity consistently exceeded 99.95% and met Chinese industrial specifications. Professor Loo told the seminar: “We sampled so that we can test its quality … happy to report that the CO2 had high purity, and it met Chinese industrial CO2 specifications. It was accepted by the end user and actually used in this process.”

Operational safety was another central concern. A hazard identification assessment, mooring analysis, leak scenarios and emergency response plan were conducted before offloading. LNG and LPG protocols were adapted, with three operational zones marked and eight oxygen analysers deployed in the hazardous area. Professor Loo told delegates that adapting existing protocols was critical: “Safety is one [critical area]. This STS had never been done before, and so we adapted LNG and LPG guidelines to do this.” She added that no incidents occurred during transfer.

The project exposed inefficiencies in transfer operations. Of the 25.44 tonnes offloaded, only 15.84 tonnes were ultimately delivered to Baorong Environmental. Professor Loo noted: “Two-thirds of the offloaded CO2 made it to the end user. It is approximately two and a half metric tons of CO2 that was lost during these transfers.” She added: “28% to be exact, of CO2 was actually left in these various different storage tanks.”