enfinium partners with Hitachi Zosen Inova for UK’s first waste-to-energy carbon capture pilot plant

enfinium

WASTE-TO-ENERGY company enfinium has selected Hitachi Zosen Inova (HZI) to install a carbon capture pilot plant at one of its facilities in West Yorkshire, UK. The scaled-down, mobile, containerised plant will be housed at the Ferrybridge 1 facility.  

The pilot plant, the first of its kind in the UK, will use HZI’s amine-scrubbing solution, part of the company’s BioMethan gas upgrading technology that converts raw biogases into biomethane. The amine solution works by absorbing CO2 from the flue gas generated by the processing plant.  

enfinium expects the plant to capture up to 1 t/d CO2. It will run for at least 12 months and is slated to be operational from July.

Testing for scalability

The pilot plant will be used to assess the potential commercial scalability of CO2 removal technology at all enfinium waste-to-energy facilities. enfinium will compare different solvents and collect performance data related to CO2 capture rate, energy consumption, and solvent degradation.

The pilot will take enfinium a step closer to its aim of implementing carbon capture and storage (CSS) at both its Ferrybridge 1 and 2 facilities. With a potential investment of up to £800m (US$1bn), the company expects its facilities to capture more than 1.2m t/y of CO2.

Ferrybridge 1 and 2 each produce 85 MW of electricity for the National Grid. Site one processes up to 725,000 t/y of residual waste, with site two processing the same volume in post-recycled waste.

Mike Maudsley, CEO of enfinium, said: “[Installing carbon capture technology] offers benefits including creating durable carbon removals, or negative emissions, at scale and generating reliable homegrown carbon negative power.

“This ground-breaking partnership with HZI will allow us to test multiple capture techniques that could in the future be deployed across our facilities at scale.”

Continued partnership

The waste-to-energy sector is a major part of the government’s Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage (CCUS) plan, which expects CCUS deployment to be self-sufficient across all sectors, including industrial emitters and gas-fired power plants, by 2035. 

HZI is also enfinium’s engineering, procurement, and construction partner on its £500m Skelton Grange waste-to-energy facility in Leeds.

The facility is expected to process up to 410,000 t of residual waste and use it to generate of energy. enfinium expects the site to be operational from 2025.