MHI Industrial Engineering & Services Private Ltd. (MIES), a 100% subsidiary company of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI), Japan, has received an order to build a large-scale carbon dioxide (CO2) recovery plant for Qatar Fuel Additives Co., Ltd. (QAFAC), a major fuel additive producer in Qatar.
QAFAC is a petrochemical company established in 1990 with headquarters in Doha. The company produces methanol and methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE). The CO2, which is to be recovered at up to 500 tons per day (tpd) is one of the world’s largest commercial scale CO2 recovery plants. It will be used to increase the production of methanol.
The order is MIES’s first overseas EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) Project and the first MHI CO2 recovery plant specifically targeted at raising methanol production. Construction of the plant is targeted for completion in October 2014. The CO2 recovery plant, which will be built within QAFAC’s methanol production plant near Doha, will capture CO2 from combustion exhaust gas emitted in the methanol production process. The CO2 separated and recovered from the flue gas using MHI’s proprietary KS-1™ solvent will be used for boosting methanol production.
MIES will be responsible for EPC and Mitsubishi Corporation will handle the trade particulars for MIES. MHI will license its CO2 recovery technology to QAFAC through MIES. MHI's CO2 recovery technology is known as the KM CDR Process®. It uses MHI's proprietary KS-1 solvent for CO2 absorption and desorption which MHI jointly developed with Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. MHI's technology features considerably lower energy consumption compared with other processes and has won high evaluations for its performance. Since the first plant in Malaysia in 1999, MHI has licensed and delivered its CO2 recovery technology to nine commercial CO2 recovery plants around the world with another plant under construction – making MHI a leader in the industry.
In addition to urea and methanol production, CO2 recovery technology can be employed in other chemical applications such as production of dimethyl ether (DME). Further important applications can include carbon capture and storage (CCS) and enhanced oil recovery (EOR). CCS is used to capture CO2 from flue gas from plants, including thermal power generation plants and sequester CO2 in deep subsurfaces such as brine aquifers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. EOR is employed to boost crude oil production with the CO2 injected into oil reservoirs that have low productivity.
MIES and MHI will be marketing its CO2 recovery technology aggressively for chemical applications and for use in the CCS and EOR fields and with MIES intending to expand globally the EPC business for CO2 recovery plants.
