Fluid engineering company Sulzer Chemtech is partnering with Blue Planet to drive the optimisation of Blue Planet’s carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) solutions.
Sulzer Chemtech is developing a carbon capture unit that will be installed in Blue Planet’s pilot plant, currently being constructed in Pittsburgh, California, US, and will capture emissions from an adjacent natural gas-fired power plant.
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As part of the pilot project, Blue Planet is developing a CCUS system that removes CO2 diluted in flue gases and uses it directly to form carbonates for mineralization in the form of construction-grade aggregates. According to Blue Planet, this offers a sustainable building block for net carbon-neutral or carbon-negative concrete. As a result, the solution can offset cement’s greenhouse gas emissions by permanently sequestering CO2 in concrete as aggregate and improve the sustainability of cement manufacturing and other CO2 emitting industries.
Image credit: Blue Planet
The facility will leverage Sulzer Chemtech’s advanced mass transfer components that have been specifically developed to support carbon reduction applications, such as MellaPakCC structured packing. This provides high CO2 absorption performance while maintaining low energy consumption. As a result, Blue Planet’s facility will be able to leverage a cost-effective setup to maximize the greenhouse gas reduction from various industrial activities and use for the production of synthetic limestone and other carbonate minerals.
Torsten Wintergerste, president of Sulzer Chemtech, said: “We are delighted to be part of such a cutting-edge project that will help reduce carbon emissions from industrial applications as well as the cement sector. This further demonstrates how our state-of-the-art separation technologies and know-how can support demanding CCUS applications.”
In addition to these solutions, Sulzer Chemtech’s global development team will provide engineering support to further optimise the process steps.