Canada’s CO2 Solutions ends U.S. joint carbon capture program early
by Cleantech Canada Staff
Quebec-based firm said carbon capture work with Colorado-based company was "no longer in its best interests"
QUEBEC—Quebec-based cleantech firm CO2 Solutions Inc. has abruptly ended plans for a joint carbon capture pilot facility in the United States just months after “breakthrough” preliminary results.
After announcing in July it would move the launch of its joint carbon capture demonstration with Neumann Systems Group Inc. (NSG), originally slated to launch in the spring of 2015, to October 2014, the company said it ended the collaboration as of Sept. 25.
CO2 Solutions said the work with Colorado-based NSG was “no longer in its best interests.”
It said the decision to call off the work was made as part of the company’s “strategic review of the options available in the pursuit of commercial opportunities,” particularly in the U.S.
Set to be built in Colorado Springs, Colo., the pilot was meant to capture about 10 tonnes per day of carbon dioxide emissions from industrial effluent gases using a combination of CO2 Solutions’ enzyme-based carbon capture solvent and NSG’s NeuStream high mass transfer gas-liquid contactor technology.
The decision to move the pilot demonstration launch forward by about six months came after testing apparently found the combined system captured carbon dioxide at an efficiency comparable to “the best” amine-based capture systems, CO2 Solutions said in July.
“We are now focusing our attention and resources on alternative collaborations to meet our objective of offering a low-cost, next-generation commercial (carbon dioxide) capture system for applications such as enhanced oil recovery,” CO2 Solutions’ president and chief executive Evan Price said in a statement announcing the collaboration’s end.
A day after announcing it was severing ties with NSG, the company said it was joining a carbon capture research program run through the University of North Dakota.
It wasn’t clear whether the move was part of CO2 Solutions’ decision to end its work with NSG.
The company said it will join the program—run through the university’s Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC)—as a sponsor, and will begin testing its technology in December.
The goal of the program, according to CO2 Solutions, is to evaluate a number of carbon capture technologies for potential use in power and steam generation plants.
“The tests will have approximately twice the capacity of (CO2 Solutions’) largest testing to date,” the company said in a statement.
The University of North Dakota program is supported by the United States Department of Energy.
