- The world’s first carbon capture pilot for smelters was officially inaugurated last week.
- It produces speciality ferrosilicon products and micro silica based on renewable hydropower.
Last week, the world’s first carbon capture pilot for smelters was officially inaugurated. The Mobile Test Unit (MTU), delivered by Aker Carbon Capture, is now connected to Elkem’s plant in Rana, Norway, which produces high-purity ferrosilicon and microsilica. The carbon capture pilot testing is a collaboration between Elkem, Mo Industripark, SMA Mineral, SINTEF, Alcoa, Celsa Group, Ferroglobe PLC, Norcem AS, NorFraKalk AS, ACT Cluster and Aker Carbon Capture. Full-scale implementation can capture 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 from their combined emissions. In a couple of months, testing will commence at SMA Mineral.
The CEO Elkem, Helge Aasen said, “Elkem is very pleased to be a part of this pilot. 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. That is why we are particularly pleased about the good collaboration between several partners in this project, and we will monitor the results of the pilot closely.”
Elkem’s plant in Rana, Norway, was established in 1989 and today has around 140 employees. It produces speciality ferrosilicon products and micro silica based on renewable hydropower. The pilot test is part of a larger R&D project, CO2 HUB Nord, which runs over two years and is funded by Climit Demo. The project’s main goal is to verify the technology on real industrial gases from smelters and other process industries to prepare a full-scale plant for industrial carbon capture. The development and verification of new technology for carbon capture will enable the CO2-HUB Nord to accelerate innovation and industrialization of the carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) value chain. Industrialization of such technology is considered an important contributor to reducing CO2 emissions and delivering on global sustainability goals.