A consortium of European companies is working on a €19m EU-funded project to demonstrate carbon capture and storage (CCS) from industrial activities in Dunkirk, in France.
Eleven European stakeholders, including ArcelorMittal, Axens, IFP Energies nouvelles (IFPEN) and oil and gas player Total, are part of the DMXTM Demonstration in Dunkirk (3D) project.
The €19.3m project, which will run over four years under the Horizon 2020 programme, includes €14.8m in EU subsidies.
IFPEN is coordinating the initiative which will use the patented process DMXTM stemming from the company’s research.
The pilot, designed by Axens, will be built, starting in 2020, at the ArcelorMittal steelworks site in Dunkirk and will be able to capture 0.5 metric tonnes of CO2 an hour from steelmaking gases by 2021.
The DMXTM process, which Axens will bring to market, uses a solvent that reduces energy consumption needed for capture by nearly 35% compared with the reference process.
Additionally, using the heat produced on site will cut capture costs in half, to less than €30 per metric tonne of carbon dioxide.
The pilot will allow the partners to prepare the implementation of a first industrial unit at the ArcelorMittal site in Dunkirk, which could be operational starting in 2025.
The facility will be designed to capture more than 125 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide an hour, which is more than one million metric tonnes of the gas annually.
The 3D project will also inform the Design the future European Dunkirk North Sea cluster, which should be able to capture, pack, transport and store 10 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide a year and should be operational by the year 2035.
The cluster will be backed up by the packing and transport infrastructure for storing the gas in the North Sea, developed by other projects, such as Northern Lights project1, which Total is already involved in.