Norway is focusing on CCS applications in industry, with three pre-feasibility studies underway on CCS projects at a fertiliser plant, a waste to energy plant and at an ammonia fertiliser plant. Whilst it may be that Norway only chooses one project to proceed to demonstration, all three represent unique opportunities that will add to the portfolio of industrial CCS projects internationally.
Norway’s main on-shore CO2 emission point sources all come from industrial sources so the decision to focus on these for CCS deployment is obvious. Of course the biggest point source is the Statoil Mongstad oil refinery, which proved too costly to add CCS to in a previous study.
The prospects for deploying CCS in industry were discussed at the CLIMIT workshop on Emerging Technologies in Oslo in January 2016.
The NORCEM Brevik CCS Project has already tested 4 different capture technology options; post combustion capture, membranes, solid absorbent and calcium looping at difference scales. For early deployment NORCEM favour post combustion capture.
Aker Solutions now have their mobile post combustion capture test laboratory at the Energigjenvinningsetaten, Household waste incineration plant and we await the results of those trials.
Ammonia fertiliser production already involves the capture of CO2, typically the industry uses post combustion or PSA capture.
In a discussion panel involving the industry parties some of the issues they suggested for industry CCS deployment were:
- In the case of cement and fertiliser production these are companies that face international product price competition and hence they are wary of being priced out of the market.
- The cement plant at Brevik has a waste heat stream which could be used to capture 50% of the CO2 produced, which could be cost effective
- The waste incineration prospect is more unique as it also supplies heat for district heating and any use of heat for CCS must be balanced against supply contracts for heat.
One common factor was that none of the companies have any experience with CO2 transport and storage and hence an attractive option for them would be to “sell” the CO2 over the fence.
The Norwegian thinking is to use ship transport to take the CO2 to storage fields off shore Norway, which themselves are part of an evaluation study by Statoil to assess their storage potentials.