Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
10/9/2015
The United Kingdom’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) late last week awarded £1.7 million to carbon capture and storage projects as part of phase four of the government’s energy entrepreneurs fund. “The funding will support the development and demonstration of state of the art CCS technologies to support cost reductions and innovation,” according to a DECC announcement.
The funds will be divided among three projects headed by Carbon Clean Solutions, C-Capture, and FET Engineering.
Carbon Clean Solutions will use the DECC funds to compare the carbon capture performance of a monoethanolamine solvent with its own new solvent. According to the DECC award, the new solvent could require “less energy and have improved environmental performance than the industry bench mark.” The project will be conducted in collaboration with Newcastle University and the University of Hull.
C-Capture, a spin-off from Leeds University, will test variants of its amine-free chemistry for suitability in the laboratory and then scale it up on the company’s pre-pilot test rig to identify optimum conditions. “The results will be used in licensing negotiations with manufacturers of CCS plant and chemicals,” the announcement says.
Future Environmental Technologies (FET) Group will test its PureStream carbon capture technology. “Project PureStream offers significant advantages over the other Carbon Capture technologies identified in research, as the core technology behind PureStream is a proven electro-chemical process,” the announcement says. “PureStream, which can be retro-fitted into existing infrastructures, is a lower cost and more environmentally friendly solution to carbon capture than the current CCS technologies under development.”
