Riviera’s webinar on emerging carbon capture clusters examined the challenges and opportunities in the nascent field
Marlog senior manager green transition, maritime and logistics Jan Boyesen said the near future will see light-duty transport using electric power while heavy-duty vehicles use hydrogen power. But the company’s Power-to-X roadmap forsees synthetic fuels containing carbon playing a significant role in industrial applications.
With the shipping and aviation sectors set to begin using synthetic fuels containing carbon this decade, Mr Boyesen said the emerging carbon capture and storage (CCS) supply chain will require carbon capture as well as liquefication and loading. Long-range transportation will require a scaling up of CO2 carriers.
Marlog is part of the decarbonICE project which aims to freeze CO2 out of ship’s exhaust gas using existing fuels, to produce dense, torpedo-shaped, dry ice blocks that are then discharged into the sea. These blocks descend and then penetrate the seabed where the CO2 is stored permanently as CO2 hydrate.
As an energy-intensive carbon capture method, Mr Boyesen said consumption is dependent on fuel used and will require a significant amount of additional fuel. Consumption of normal marine oil would increase by 10% to capture 80% of emitted CO2 whereas the corresponding increase in fuel use for LNG is about 7%. Mr Boyesen said the bulk of the cost will be operational, at around US$23 per tonne of CO2 at current VLSFO prices. Capex costs are estimated to be the same as installing a new scrubber on board vessels.
The production rate of dry ice depends on the vessel in question, with deepsea ships using 100 tonnes of bunker fuel every 24 hours (emitting roughly 300 tonnes of CO2).
“We need a very fast production facility. It is a main priority,” Mr Boyesen said. Marlog plans to use seawater for cooling before moving to an industrial coolant and later LNG as the final coolant.
Of the possible effect on marine life, Mr Boyesen said Marlog’s method operates at the depth of the abyssal plains at depths of more than 2,700 m which is inhospitable to marine life. Although, he said that when the ice interacts with the seabed, it is expected to raise acidity levels there.
Fortum Oslo Varme director CCS, Jannicke Gerner Bjerkås discussed the challenges faced by his company’s CCS project, which aims to capture 400,000 tonnes of CO2 per year from a waste-to-energy plant in Oslo.
The captured CO2 will be transported by ship from the capture plant to an onshore facility on Norway’s west coast for temporary storage before being transported via a pipeline to a subsea reservoir in the North Sea for storage. To get the volume down, the CO2 capture is done at the site, then transported to port.
Fortum’s pilot programme began in 2019 and has shown impressive results. The 5,500-hour pilot test, conducted over nine months, captured about 3.5 tonnes of CO2 a day, at a 95% capture rate.
Another CCS project at cement manufacturer Norcem’s Brevik factory is receiving funding from the Norwegian Government.
Ms Bjerkås stressed that state support and scaling such projects is vital to future success and added that Europe needs more waste-to-energy plants (with integrated CO2 capture technology) to handle residual waste.
Fortum has secured half its funding for its incineration facility in Oslo and is seeking partial funding from the EU’s Horizon project. 78% of webinar attendees feel that such bio-energy CCS and carbon removal technologies will play a major role in meeting the UN’s climate goals.
But these technologies remain expensive. While there is no exact price, carbon capture at Fortum’s project alone costs approximately €50 (US$61) per tonne, which Ms Bjerkås admitted was an area for concern.
“We need to bring this [cost] down. What we need is the volume of these plants to emerge, development in technology and a carbon tax. We also need to get the footprint and dimensions of these capture plants reduced. That would be a factor for success,” he said.
Equinor, Shell and Total are responsible for planning the storage facility but the energy majors do not expect to make immediate profits on the technology and Mr Boyesen also admitted that CCS makes “a tough business case” at present.
60% of attendees feel CCS costs will remain high and will only dip below the emissions trading scheme price in more than 20 years.
In the long term, Mr Boyesen said the industry has to “derisk” these investments by scaling the business model and emphasising collaborations with shipowners and other stakeholders.
Webinar panellists (left to right):
Fortum Oslo Varme director CCS (CO2 capture and storage) Jannicke Gerner Bjerkås
Maritime & Logistics Innovation Denmark (MARLOG) senior manager green transition Jan Boyesen
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