Today, the world's first carbon capture pilot for smelters has been officially
inaugurated. The Mobile Test Unit (MTU), delivered by Aker Carbon Capture, is
now connected to Elkem's plant in Rana, which produces high-purity ferrosilicon
and microsilica.
The carbon capture pilot testing is a collaboration between Elkem, Mo
Industripark, SMA Mineral , SINTEF, Alcoa, Celsa Group, Ferroglobe PLC, Norcem
AS, NorFraKalk AS, ACT Cluster and Aker Carbon Capture. With full-scale
implementation, 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 can be captured from their combined
emissions. In a couple of months, testing will commence at SMA Mineral.
Amund Vik, Deputy Minister from the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy,
spoke at the ceremony.
"There is no doubt that we need CCUS to reach our climate targets. We need CCS
in hard-to-abate industries to keep industrial jobs in Europe. This pilot will
provide important learning related to CO2-capture in metal industries, and will
be an important hub for other companies in the Industrial Park to test CO2
-capture technology," says Deputy Minister Amund Vik.
"The Mobile Test Unit was built in 2008 and has continuously been upgraded in
accordance with our latest technology developments. Aker Carbon Capture can
therefore offer our customers a unique opportunity to test our technology at
their site and de-risk the project prior to a possible full-scale
implementation. It is truly great to officially kick off this project today with
all our partners in Rana," says Valborg Lundegaard, Chief Executive Officer at
Aker Carbon Capture.
"Elkem is very pleased to be a part of this pilot. The world needs more metals
and other materials to succeed with the green transition, but we also need to
achieve lower global CO2 emissions. Carbon capture can potentially contribute
significantly towards our global climate roadmap of reducing emissions towards
net zero while growing supplies to the green transition. At the same time, Elkem
is dependent on our stakeholders to enable green technologies at an industrial
scale. That is why we are particularly pleased about the good collaboration
between several partners in this project, and we will monitor the results of the
pilot closely," says Elkem's CEO Helge Aasen.
Elkem's plant in Rana, Norway, was established in 1989 and today has around 140
employees. It produces speciality ferrosilicon products and microsilica based on
renewable hydropower.
The pilot test is part of a larger R&D project, CO2 HUB Nord, which runs over
two years and is funded by Climit Demo. The main goal of the project is to
verify the technology on real industrial gases from smelters and other process
industries, in order to prepare a full-scale plant for industrial carbon
capture.
Through development and verification of new technology for carbon capture, the
CO2-HUB Nord accelerates innovation and industrialization of the carbon capture,
utilization and storage (CCUS) value chain. Industrialization of such technology
is considered as an important contributor to reducing CO2 emissions and
delivering on the global sustainability goals.