On the huge site of the Dunkirk Steelworks (North), 7 kilometers long and 3 wide, this small column 22 meters high, lined with pipes, does not impress anyone. However, in the shadow of Arcelor-Mittal’s four blast furnaces, this facility could well equip thousands of industrial sites around the world if companies are serious about achieving zero carbon emissions by 2050. One year, 12-partner 3D project of the six European countries will indeed have to prove their effectiveness in releasing CO2-free smoke into the atmosphere.
The CO2 contacts the solvent in the absorber. The mixture passes through a decanter, which retains only the richest CO2 part, to be sent to the regenerator (stripper) where the solvent and gas are separated under a pressure of 5 bar and optimal thermal conditions. The decanter saves 30% energy. Copyright Ifp-ru
The technology used has been developed. “It has been over a century since amine-based solvents have demonstrated their effectiveness in separating carbon dioxide from other gases present in smoke.recalls Florence Delprat-Jeannot, CO2 coordinator at IFP-New Energies. The whole challenge is to optimize the composition of the solvent and reduce costs.”. It is on this basis that IFP-En undertook the research program that today has led to the Dunkirk pilot project. The tower consists of two columns, in one of which the solvent comes into contact with the smoke and absorbs CO2, and in the other the amines are degassed. “It works just like the human circulatory system.” compares Florence Delprat-Jeannot. IFP engineers worked on solvent optimization as well as system efficiency. Thus, the intermediate chamber retains solvents with an optimal CO2 content for returning low-loaded solvents to the circuit, which reduces energy costs by 30%.
Manufacturers campaign has already begun
Throughout the year, engineers will collect real-time data from the system, refine yields, check required amine levels, calculate the overall efficiency of the machinery, as well as its energy costs.
On the huge site of the Dunkirk Steelworks (North), 7 kilometers long and 3 wide, this small column 22 meters high, lined with pipes, does not impress anyone. However, in the shadow of Arcelor-Mittal’s four blast furnaces, this facility could well equip thousands of industrial sites around the world if companies are serious about achieving zero carbon emissions by 2050. One year, 12-partner 3D project of the six European countries will indeed have to prove their effectiveness in releasing CO2-free smoke into the atmosphere.
The CO2 contacts the solvent in the absorber. The mixture passes through a decanter, which retains only the richest CO2 part, to be sent to the regenerator (stripper) where the solvent and gas are separated under a pressure of 5 bar and optimal thermal conditions. The decanter saves 30% energy. Copyright Ifp-ru
The technology used has been developed. “It has been over a century since amine-based solvents have demonstrated their effectiveness in separating carbon dioxide from other gases present in smoke.recalls Florence Delprat-Jeannot, CO2 coordinator at IFP-New Energies. The whole challenge is to optimize the composition of the solvent and reduce costs.”. It is on this basis that IFP-En undertook the research program that today has led to the Dunkirk pilot project. The tower consists of two columns, in one of which the solvent comes into contact with the smoke and absorbs CO2, and in the other the amines are degassed. “It works just like the human circulatory system.” compares Florence Delprat-Jeannot. IFP engineers worked on solvent optimization as well as system efficiency. Thus, the intermediate chamber retains solvents with an optimal CO2 content for returning low-loaded solvents to the circuit, which reduces energy costs by 30%.
Manufacturers campaign has already begun
Throughout the year, engineers will collect real-time data from the system, refine yields, check required amine levels, calculate the overall efficiency of the machinery, as well as its energy costs. According to initial laboratory data, the method eliminates 99.7% of CO2. The Iron and Steel Center is an ideal laboratory. The composition of the smoke at the end of the process includes approximately 20% CO2 (with other gases such as carbon monoxide, hydrogen, nitrogen oxides), i.e. twice as much as, for example, at a cement plant. Thus, the pilot project will capture 4,000 tons per year. From 2025, the industrial plant will remove 125 tons of CO2 per hour, or one million tons per year, thanks to a thirty-meter column with a diameter of 7 to 10 meters.
“The data that the pilot will provide will allow us to interview manufacturers with tangible performance and efficiency results.” explains Christian Streicher, director of gas development at Axens, an IFP subsidiary that sells industrial processes from its laboratories. This is because the market barely opens and creates a lot of appetite. American, Japanese and European companies are already surveying manufacturers. With an argument that goes beyond climate conservation. The price per tonne of carbon in the European market is 80 euros per tonne, compared to less than 5 during the Paris Agreement in 2015, which makes avoiding emissions profitable. If amines have the advantage of being proven effective over a long period of time, other technologies are also being proposed, such as nanomembranes, in which the gas is trapped by obstacles pierced by holes smaller than the molecule. An inventory of this very active and changing sector year after year is carried out by the CCS Global Institute. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) 2020 report, projects worth more than 25 billion euros are currently being implemented around the world.
European CO2 will be buried in the North Sea
What to do with this over 90% pure CO2? Today, the demand for this gas is largely sufficient for the needs of the chemical industry, so much so that recycling is not possible. In addition, the depleted gas fields of the North Sea are a planned destination, where the gas will be finally buried at a depth of 3 to 4000 m. Several European programs are building this important building block for transporting CO2 by sea or by pipeline. Thus, the Aramis “hub” project in the Netherlands provides for the construction of a site for connecting a 200-kilometer pipeline to old wells. The future European hub Dunkirk-North Sea should also be able to capture, condition, transport and store 10 million tons of CO2 per year by 2035. In a second step, this CO2 can be recombined with green hydrogen when there is enough production to produce biofuels.
Thus, CO2 capture and storage is on the rise. For a long time, both environmental NGOs and IPCC economists fought for a solution. Fear ? This technology frees manufacturers from having to focus their efforts on decarburization of production processes, especially in the steel, cement, energy and chemical industries. The idea gradually took hold that capture and storage could only take place after efforts to conserve energy and phase out fossil fuels. Thus, the 2018 IPCC report supports the use of this technology, and this position should be confirmed by the next global assessment of greenhouse gas emission reduction measures, which will be published on April 4, 2022.
Priority of energy saving and decarburization processes
In any case, Dunkirk is subject to this order of precedence. The 3D project treats only 4% of tail gases from recent steelmaking operations. The previous phases are the subject of much larger decarbonization operations, for which 1.7 billion euros will be mobilized with state support. “Blast furnaces that currently burn coke will be replaced by hydrogen-burning furnaces, and the proportion of recycled steel added to the process will increase from a few percent today to almost 30 percent, depending on the quality of steel required.“, says Mathieu Yale, managing director of Arcelor-Mittal France. Thus, emissions from two French steel plants – Dunkirk and Fos-sur-Mer in Bouches-du-Rhone – will decrease by 40% by 2030. These 7.8 million tonnes avoided emissions account for 10% of the total current emissions of the entire French industry.
Therefore, the supporters of CCS hope that in the near future all major industrial CO2 emission points in France will recover their CO2. In France, in addition to Arcelor Mittal, it is mainly a dozen cement plants and about twenty large chemical enterprises. In Europe, more than 11,000 “chimneys” subject to the European carbon market are potentially affected.