Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
9/4/2015
After more than 1,000 hours of operation at Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, near Montreal, Québec, CO2 Solutions’ carbon capture demonstration project continues to perform as anticipated, the company reported this week. “The results to date have fully met our expectations, and we are confident that the experience gathered in this demonstration will facilitate and accelerate our efforts to transition to the commercial launch of the technology,” President and CEO Evan Price said in a press release.
According to the release, after 1,200 hours of operation, nearly halfway through the 2,500 hours scheduled, the company’s proprietary enzyme, 1T1, has demonstrated CO2 capture consistently at design capacity. Furthermore, the company said no enzyme catalytic performance degradation has been observed to date and that the capture operation does not destabilize the heat or power production.
“The project has confirmed important operating parameters such as enzyme robustness, capture kinetics, solvent stability and capacity. As this is a pilot unit, we are using this opportunity to run a wide variety of tests on the unit over and above those specified in the initial brief. For instance, by widely varying input conditions, we have been stress-testing the system. To date, the system has responded well to all of these tests, validating the significant robustness of our technology,” Louis Fradette, CO2 Solutions’ chief technology officer, said in the release.
The project has gone through a number of changes since its inception. CO2 Solutions initially tested its enzyme-enabled carbon capture technology at the University of North Dakota’s Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC). Due to better than expected test results at EERC, the company moved its timeline for demonstration forward. The project was originally slated to run for 2,500 hours at Husky Energy’s Pikes Peak South, Saskatchewan, heavy-oil site. In May, the company began testing at Valleyfield and subsequently decided to perform all testing there to avoid the additional cost of relocation.
