Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
2/13/2015
Off-site construction on CO2 Solutions’ Husky Energy pilot project has begun and is on schedule to be installed at Husky’s Pikes Peak South, Saskatchewan, heavy oil site in May, CO2 Solutions announced last week. “We have pretty much completed the procurement and we are starting the assembly of the pilot project. It’s a 10 tonne per day unit and it’s going up in Montreal. We’re building it in Montreal and then we are going to assemble it, do some final testing in March and then we’re shipping it in April and commissioning it in May and operating until September. We want to operate for 2,500 hours,” CO2 Solutions President and CEO Evan Price told GHG Monitor this week.
The pilot unit will employ CO2 Solutions’ carbonic anhydrase enzyme-enabled carbon capture technology, which utilizes modified carbonic anhydrase enzymes in place of amine chemicals and is touted by the company as more environmentally friendly than an amine based system. The pilot is being funded, in part, by the government of Canada’s ecoENERGY Innovation Initiative program.
Originally the pilot was intended to be slightly larger, capturing 15 tonnes a day. In September, though, the decision was made to scale the project down to 10 tonnes a day, which Price says will ensure that the project stays within budget and will have no effect on the pilot. “We adjusted it a little bit when we went from 15 to 10. It doesn’t have any impact on the pilot itself or the results or what we want to have out of the pilot,” Price said. “We just wanted to play it a little safe in making sure that we’re coming in within our budget, which we are and recognizing that in financial fact for the purpose of the pilot … going from 15 to 10 really just has no consequence on what we want as a result of the pilot which is really a demonstration at a large size of our technology and confirmation, because in doing so we confirm the simulations we’ve done ahead of time.”
