Clean Coal Technologies

Carbon-capture firm Akers pursuing projects with Siemens, Honeywell & Doosan Babcock

Carbon-capture firm Akers pursuing projects with Siemens, Honeywell & Doosan Babcock
(photo courtesy Southern Company/National Carbon Capture Center)

By Rod Walton, Power Engineering and POWERGEN+ Content Director

A company focused purely on carbon capture technologies has signed deals with three major energy firms as it approaches research and project operations in Europe.

Aker Carbon Capture has selected Honeywell to use its software and research and development tools for its work on large-scale carbon capture and storage initiatives. Sister company Aker Solutions already has been utilizing Honeywell’s UniSim Design software for several years to enable operational processes.

“Honeywell software helps make some of the world’s largest buildings and industrial facilities safer, more sustainable and more efficient,” said Stuart Morstead, VP and GM for Honeywell Connected Industrial. “We are pleased to be bringing our software solutions to Aker Carbon Capture as we work together to help Europe meet its carbon neutrality goals.”

A few days earlier, Aker Carbon Capture announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Siemens Energy aimed at developing  CC solutions applied to gas turbines and gas-fired power plants. The Aker-Siemens collaboration will be global, but focus first on the European market for new and existing low-carbon power generation as well as carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects.

“The drive towards net zero carbon emissions is gaining speed throughout the energy industry,” said Karim Amin, Executive Vice President for Power Generation at Siemens Energy. “We are pleased to cooperate with Aker Carbon Capture providing our customers with highly efficient gas turbines equipped with highly efficient carbon capture solutions to support their decarbonization journeys.” 

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Akers Solutions also has partnered up with engineering, procurement and construction specialist Doosan Babcock to pursue contracts with new hydrogen production plants and facilities for CCS and utilization of captured carbon.

CCS is typically deployed around coal-fired power generation but natural gas is supplanting that resource, particularly in the U.S. and also worldwide as it is lower priced, more efficient and offers lower emissions. Gas-fired power makes up close to 35-38 percent of the U.S. generation mix and 23 percent globally, according to reports.

Aker is seeking out projects around a range of industries and emitting resources, including cement, biomass and waste-to-energy, gas-to-power and blue hydrogen projects.

European governments are developing onshore terminals to receive liquefied CO2 from industrial capture sites. The terminals process and deliver liquefied CO2 by pipeline to an offshore storage location under the ocean for permanent storage. Some of these projects will be critical drivers in helping Europe meet its ambition of carbon-neutrality by 2050 through the scaling up of CO2 capture across the continent, according to Akers.

The U.S. is home to numerous CCS projects, including the U.S. Department of Energy’s testing site in Alabama, operated by Southern Co., and the Petra Nova plant in Texas, led by NRG Energy and Japanese oil producer JX Nippon using technology developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the Kansai Electric Power Co.

(Rod Walton is content director for Power Engineering, POWERGEN International and the online POWERGEN+ series. He is a 13-year veteran of covering the energy industry both as a longtime newspaper journalist and trade publication editor. Walton can be reached at 918-831-9177 and [email protected]).

The POWERGEN International Call for Speakers and sessions is now open and seeking content around Decarbonization, Digitalization, Hydrogen: What’s New, What’s Next, Energy Storage Breakthroughs, Optimizing Plant Performance, the Future of Electricity, the New Energy Mix (on-site, CHP, microgrids) and Trends in Conventional Power. POWERGEN will be Jan. 26-29, 2022, in Dallas.