FluRefin technology wins impact award

A CARBON capture technology developed at the University of Sheffield by IChemE member Peter Styring has won an engineering impact award.

The FluRefin technology, developed in partnership with seal manufacturer Aesseal, beat shortlisted entries from the CrossRail project and British Army Engineers to win a 2023 Engineering and Manufacturing Award.

FluRefin is a pressure swing adsorption carbon dioxide capture technology that was developed through the UKRI Sustain Manufacturing Hub, which is developing technologies to reduce emissions from steelmaking.

The developers say the technology has a smaller footprint and operational costs than amine-based capture technologies and could be well suited for capturing emissions from an array of industrial operations including power plants and food manufacturing.

FluRefin is being piloted at UK steel sites and used in a £5.4m (US$6.6m) Flue2Chem project involving Unilever and BASF. The two-year project is working to show how industrial waste gases captured from foundation industries including chemicals and glassmaking can be used as alternative source of carbon for consumer products.

University of Sheffield says a new larger scale FluRefin unit is close to being deployed at other industries including paper mills and that there are plans to commercialise the technology through a spin-out company.

Styring, who is professor of chemical engineering and chemistry at the University of Sheffield, said of the award: “This year has shown us that the technology we have believed in for the last ten years is now being recognised by the global engineering and climate mitigation industries. It’s an amazing feeling to realise that our research is making impact and a difference, and a feeling we want to perpetuate as the product reaches the international commercial market.”