Norway Begins First Smelter Carbon Capture Test

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Norway has become home to the world's first smelter carbon capture and storage (CCS) project.

A consortium of 11 companies has combined to establish the first pilot project to test CCS technology designed to capture emissions from a metals smelter at Elkem's Rana plant in Nordland, which produces high-purity ferrosilicon and microsilica. The technology, known as the "Mobile Test Unit," has been designed and deployed at a number of European locations over the past decade by Aker Carbon Capture, a division of Aker Energy (Fornebu, Norway).

"There is no doubt that we need carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) to reach our climate targets," said Amund Vik, deputy minister from the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, at the opening ceremony. "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".

One of those nearby companies will be consortium member SMA Mineral which supplies lime, limestone and dolomite-based products for the steel, mining, and pulp and paper industry. A pipeline will connect SMA's operations to Elkem's Mobile Test Unit in order to capture and test flue gasses in the coming months. If successful, the Elkem and SMA pilots will lead to the construction of a full-scale CCS plant capable of capturing 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year.

The Mobile Test Unit is a custom-built mobile CO2-capture plant with a capacity for treating and capturing up to 200 kilograms of CO2 per hour. It consists of an absorber column, two water-wash sections and an acid wash section, a stripper column, a lean-rich heat exchanger, a reboiler, and other necessary equipment for the performance of carbon capture operations.

"The Mobile Test Unit was built in 2008 and has continuously been upgraded in accordance with our latest technology developments," explained Valborg Lundegaard, chief executive officer at Aker Carbon Capture. "We can 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."

Elkem Chief Executive Officer Helge Aasen added: "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."

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