| Carbon capture CCS for EfW: the time is now


Energy-from-waste (EfW) is one of the key sectors targeted by Carbon Clean for application of its carbon capture technologies


Aniruddha Sharma CEO, Carbon Clean


We partnered with Veolia UK in February 2021 to demonstrate how our fully modular carbon capture technology can work effectively at an EfW plant. We expect to commercialise a 10 TPD carbon capture plant at one of Veolia’s energy recovery facilities in April 2022. This will be the first energy recovery facility in the UK to use carbon capture technology. The project will reduce carbon dioxide emissions and deliver landfill diversion, grid resilience, and district heating.


In December 2020, we formed a joint venture with Veolia in India to exclusively develop multiple green projects. The newly established company – Veolia Carbon Clean – is developing CCUS and compressed biogas (CBG) solutions, using our patented CDRMax and MethPure technologies. Veolia Carbon Clean will finance, design, build and operate the plants and will fast-track future projects.


Carbon Clean is also a partner in NEWEST- CCUS – an innovative three-year project funded by the ERA-NET Accelerating CCS Technologies (ACT2) initiative to assess the scale of the European market for CCUS technologies in the EfW sector. The project, which is being led by the University of Edinburgh and began in September 2019, also explores the sector’s potential for


cumulative net carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere.


The project will demonstrate technological capability and deliver a robust methodology for negative emissions accounting, which will support the successful implementation of CCUS in the EfW sector and the potential for EfW to be a key contributor to global decarbonisation. We are supplying our proprietary solvent for 1 TPD pilot scale testing and the demonstration of solvent performance at an industrial EfW facility. We are also providing expertise gained from test campaigns at Technology Centre Mongstad, Norway and the National Carbon Capture Center, USA to help design campaigns and analyse results.


The deployment of carbon capture in the EfW sector has the potential to make waste a zero or even negative emissions energy source. The time is right for the EfW sector to utilise capture solutions – regulations around emissions are tightening and new EfW plants will need carbon capture to be compliant. To enable the EfW industry to implement CCUS faster, the technology must be affordable, have limited onsite footprint, and the capability to be retrofitted. Carbon Clean’s new modular technologies address these challenges.


Above: Carbon Clean’s CDRMax™ carbon capture process can be used with flue gases that contain between 3% and 25% CO2


by volume and produces CO2 with


purity in the range 95-99%. Use of proprietary solvent and advanced heat integration significantly reduce both capital and operating costs. Due to an extremely low rate of corrosion, smaller equipment, and other improvements, CDRMax can achieve 20% CAPEX reduction compared to other available solutions, and thanks to lower heat and energy demand, OPEX is 30-40% less


Carbon Clean: a focus on “hard to abate” sectors


Carbon Clean was founded in 2009 by Aniruddha Sharma and Prateek Bumb, two graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. The starting point was development of a proprietary solvent for the extraction of CO2


from other gases.


The company has since gone on to develop a range of carbon capture technologies and services, with a focus on “hard to abate” industrial sectors such as steel, cement, refining, energy-from-waste and biogas, and the use of solvents that significantly reduce costs. The company has improved on


conventional CCS solvents with its patented formulation of amines and salts — known as Amine-Promoted Buffer Salts (APBS). This innovation has been developed into two widely-used commercial solvents: APBS- CDRMax®, which was developed to extract CO2


from flue gas in large scale industrial plants; and APBS-CARBex®, specifically designed for biogas/RNG upgrading. These


solvents can be used as either a drop-in substitute within existing systems such as in biogas separation or used with an integrated carbon capture system. Historically, cost, space and installation complexity at have been barriers to widespread adoption of carbon capture at industrial sites. Carbon Clean is addressing these barriers through both its semi- modular CDRMax solution and its recently launched fully modular, scalable CycloneCC technology.


Adoption of capture technologies opens up the potential for participation in the circular carbon economy by using the captured CO2


to produce valuable


commodities such as carbon neutral fuel, soda ash and chemicals. Strategic partners, such as Holcim, Veolia and Tata Steel, are already creating new revenue in this way. Carbon Clean’s technology is currently used in over 38 facilities across the globe, and the company is experiencing


rapid growth. It is estimated that some 1 million tonnes of carbon have already been captured, while the target is 1 billion tonnes.


Since 2016, the company has been


operating the world’s first low-cost, industrial-scale carbon capture and utilisation plant, in India, in partnership with Tuticorin Alkali Chemicals and Fertilizers Limited. Carbon Clean received backing from the UK government in 2012, 2016 and 2018 and secured $30m in private capital from a recent Series B funding round. The company’s headcount has grown by 200% since July 2020 and is expected to double again by the end of this financial year in response to a 550% increase in the project pipeline.


In July 2021, Carbon Clean was awarded the contract to carry out the FEED services for the Acorn carbon capture plant at St Fergus, Scotland.


www.modernpowersystems.com | November/December 2021 | 29


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