Swedish refiner Preem AB, a wholly owned subsidiary of Corral Petroleum Holdings AB, Stockholm, has commissioned a mobile test unit for carbon capture at its 220,000-b/d refinery in Lysekil, Sweden, as part of Preem’s previously announced broader plan to build a full-scale carbon capture plant to reduce CO2 emissions by one-third at the site by 2025 (OGJ Online, Mar. 4, 2019).
On May 26, Aker Solutions ASA started up the mobile test unit, which will capture carbon from flue gases coming from the Lysekil refinery’s hydrogen gas plant throughout 2020, the service provider said.
The test unit comes as part of Preem’s carbon capture and storage (CCS) pilot project, a collaboration between Preem, Aker Solutions, Chalmers University of Technology, Equinor Energy AS, and Norway's Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research (SINTEF) that aims to enable more companies to use CCS technology and reduce CO2 emissions, Aker Solutions said.
Funded in part by the Swedish Energy Agency and Norway’s Programme for Power Generation with Carbon Capture and Storage (CLIMIT), the pilot project will evaluate the entire CO2 value chain, including capture at the refinery, local storage, transport to a planned storage location off the Norwegian west coast, and storage itself.
Alongside forming the basis for a full-scale CCS plant slated to become operational by 2025, results of the pilot project, once completed, will be made public to help other operators reduce their carbon footprints as well, according to the service provider.
The Lysekil pilot project joins a series of other refining projects under way by Preem intended to enable the operator to become the world's first climate-neutral petroleum and biofuels company with net zero emissions across its entire value chain before 2045 (OGJ Online, Mar. 12, 2020; Jan. 27, 2020).
"We see carbon capture and storage as a vital measure to reduce global carbon emissions. For Preem, a full-scale CCS plant could initially reduce emissions from our Lysekil refinery by 500,000 [tonnes/year], which is close to one-third of the refinery's total CO2 [annual] emissions," said Petter Holland, Preem’s chief executive officer.
