REALISE project meeting in Edinburgh

At the hybrid project meeting in Edinburgh hosted by Scottish Carbon Capture and Storage (SCCS) on the 19^th-20^th April, over 30 project partners gathered to discuss progress towards decarbonising refineries through CCUS.

Inna Kim, the project coordinator based at SINTEF, and Romain Viguier, Business Development & Project Manager at SCCS, welcomed participants and gave a brief overview of the objectives of the meeting. As the project enters its final phase, attendees were encouraged to discuss their findings and future research plans.

On day 1, Erini Skylogianni, TNO, and Thor Medjell, SINTEF, presented the results from carbon capture demonstration campaigns using HS-3 solvent at the Irving Oil Whitegate Refinery in Cork, Ireland, and the CO₂ pilot plant at Tiller, Norway.

In the afternoon, Fredrik Gjertsen, Cybernetica AS, Filippo Bisotti, SINTEF Industry, and Matteo Gilardi, Politecnico di Milano, presented their work on solvent modelling and validation using pilot plant data. Their findings will help optimise solvent performance, in terms of energy usage and stability, and contribute to devise management strategies to maintain solvent quality.

On day 2, attendees discussed the latest improvements to the Online Calculator To Optimize CO₂ capture Processes for mUltiple Stacks (OCTOPUS) tool, presented by Jasper Ros, TNO, and work by Niall Dunphy, University College Cork, and The Global CCS Institute on the socio-political context for CCS deployment.

Eirik Bjørnsen, BEFORM (formely Biobe), and Andressa Nakao (NTNU)​ presented their progress in testing plastic materials to lower the construction costs of carbon capture. The potential of polymer-based materials to extend the lifetime of solvents is also being investigated.

This was followed by presentations from Gearoid Fitzgerald, Ervia, on carbon untilisation options and Søren Jensen, Pentair, on the methodology he is using to carry out a techno-economic assessment of full-scale carbon capture for refineries. The meeting ended with an overview of past and future dissemination and outreach activities.

The final project meeting will be hosted by TNO in Delft, The Netherlands, in October.

“I would like to thank all presenters and participants both in the room and on Teams for excellent presentations, interesting discussions, great comments and feedback. As the project enters its final phase, we will be focusing on delivering the final outputs, further strengthening collaborations with Mission Innovation countries and determining how to make best use of our results,” says Inna Kim, Project Coordinator, SINTEF Industry.