Press releases

Launch of the European Octavius research project for the industrial demonstration of post-combustion CO2 capture

21 March 2012

On 13 and 14 March this year, the kick-off meeting of the Octavius project dedicated to post-combustion CO₂ capture was held at IFP Energies nouvelles’ Solaize site. The objectives of this European project (FP7) are as follows:

• to prepare for the first CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) demonstrators on a thermal power plant scale, implementing first-generation CO₂ capture processes using amine-type solvents. Three CO₂ capture pilot units – the Cato pilot unit in Maasvlakte (Netherlands), the Enel pilot unit in Brindisi (Italy) and the EnBW pilot unit in Heilbronn (Germany) – will be used to test the operability and flexibility of these first-generation processes.
• to demonstrate the DMX™ second-generation post-combustion capture process resulting from IFPEN research on an industrial scale. This demonstration will be conducted at the Brindisi thermal power plant on the Enel pilot unit, capable of capturing up to 2.25 tCO₂/h on coal combustion flue gases.

Coordinated by IFPEN, the project brings together 16 other partners from the worlds of research and industry:

• 13 partners from 8 European Union and associated countries: TNO, Sintef, NTNU, Ineris, DTU, TUHH, E.ON, EnBW, Doosan Power Systems, Enel, Laborelec (GDFSuez), EDF, Prosernat.
• 1 partner from the Russian Federation: TIPS.
• 2 partners from South Africa: EcoMetrix and Eskom.

Scheduled to last 5 years, Octavius has a total budget of €13.5 million, €8 million of which will be provided by the European Commission.

A key step in the CCS process, capture consists in extracting the CO₂ produced by large-scale CO₂-emitting industrial facilities, then pressurizing it before injecting it into a geological storage system. The main challenge of the research conducted as part of the Octavius project is to significantly increase the energy efficiency of the capture step in order to reduce its costs.

Among the various CO₂ capture technologies, first-generation processes use alkanolamines, which have been studied in previous European projects (Castor and Cesar). Commercially available Alkanolamine based processes have been proposed for the ROAD and Porto Tolle CCS demonstration projects as part of the European Economic Recovery Plan. The Octavius project will provide the most recent information required for full-scale implementation of these processes, particularly with respect to atmospheric emissions, operability, flexibility and integration.

The second-generation DMX™ process developed by IFPEN uses a demixing solvent capable of cutting the energy consumption for solvent regeneration by almost 40%, reducing it until 2.3 GJ per metric ton of CO₂ captured, in comparison with 3.7 GJ/tCO₂ for a standard process using a solution containing 30% by weight of MonoEthanolAmine. The first technical and economic assessments have demonstrated that the DMX™ method applied to CO₂ capture on a coal-fired thermal power plant reduces the energy penalty by 2 points, thereby cutting the costs associated with CO₂ capture by 20%.

By demonstrating the capture stage on a large scale, Octavius will therefore contribute to the industrial application of CCS processes.

For further information
>> www.octavius-co2.eu