Next phase of project feasibility study to commence, will develop facility design to support capture, use and storage of 2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

On September 1, the United States Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE-NETL) awarded $1.5 million in federal funding for cost-shared research and development to support the initial engineering analysis and advancement of the LH CO2MENT Colorado Project, which was the subject of a scoping study launched earlier this year. The commercial-scale carbon-capture project, based in Florence, Colorado, is a partnership of Svante Inc., LafargeHolcim, Kiewit Engineering Group Inc., Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, LLC (OLCV), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Occidental, and Total.

With the successful completion of the initial scoping study in June 2020 and confirmation of DOE funding, the partnership has committed to the next project phase to evaluate the feasibility of the facility designed to capture up to 2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year directly from the Holcim cement plant and the natural gas-fired steam generator, which would be sequestered underground permanently by Occidental.

“Oxy Low Carbon Ventures is leveraging Occidental’s 40 years of experience in securely storing CO₂ in geologic formations to advance permanent sequestration as a solution that supports global emissions reduction efforts through carbon retirement,” said Oxy Low Carbon Ventures President Richard Jackson. “This partnership is a powerful example of how cross-industry collaboration can help progress carbon capture, utilization and storage projects that will be critical to accelerating the transition to a lower-carbon world.”

The carbon-capture facility under review will employ Svante’s solid sorbent technology to capture carbon directly from the cement kiln as a non-intrusive “end-of-the-pipe’’ solution.

“We have been very vocal about the importance we place on finding and accelerating global solutions to reduce our carbon footprint,” said Jamie Gentoso, CEO, U.S. Cement for LafargeHolcim. “Effective and efficient large scale carbon capture technology will be a profound advancement for many industries. This U.S. DOE grant is a significant step in advancing this first-of-its-kind, large-scale technology, and we’re proud to partner with Svante, Oxy Low Carbon Ventures and Total to bring it to life.”

“This project along with the U.S. DOE funding is an important external validation that we are becoming a significant global technology provider in carbon capture space across a range of large-scale industrial applications like cement and blue hydrogen” said Claude Letourneau, president and CEO of Svante Inc.

“Total brings its experience in this new phase of feasibility to support the development of Svante’s promising CO₂ capture technology. Together with our industrial partners and thanks to public-private initiative, we aim at accelerating the deployment, at scale, of innovative and cost-efficient technologies, contributing to decarbonize industry and curb CO₂ emissions“, said Marie-Noëlle Semeria, senior vice president, Group CTO at Total.

Electricore, Inc. will facilitate management of the federal grant, and Kiewit Engineering Group Inc. will lead the engineering development. This joint initiative follows the recently-launched Pilot Plant Project CO2MENT between Svante, LafargeHolcim and Total in Canada at the Lafarge Richmond cement plant, where progress has been made towards re-injecting captured CO2 into concrete.