Scottish Carbon Capture partners win lion’s share of £4m UK fund to tackle industrial emissions

Scientists from the Scottish Carbon Capture & Storage (SCCS) research partnership have competitively won a 70% share of a £4 million fund for vital research into technology to support UK industry’s efforts to reduce C02 emissions. 

Researchers from SCCS will lead three out of four projects being funded by EPSRC’s Research Challenges in Industrial CCS fund, and will work closely with industry partners on developing flexible and cost-effective CO2 capture technologies.

Scottish Carbon Capture & Storage (SCCS) is an independent research partnership of British Geological Survey, Heriot-Watt University, the University of Aberdeen, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Strathclyde.

The projects have secured £2.8 million from the EPSRC call and include:

Versatile adsorption processes for the capture of carbon dioxide from industrial sources – FlexICCS (£1.1m project)

Principal Investigator: Prof Stefano Brandani, University of Edinburgh, School of Engineering

This project team comprises scientists exclusively from the SCCS partnership. The project will be led by the University of Edinburgh, with researchers from the University of St Andrews alongside industry partners Air Products and Chemicals, INEOS, Lotte Chemical, Diageo, Howden Group Technology and Tees Valley Unlimited. The project is also supported by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.

The team will explore adsorption-based CO2 capture, developing new materials tailored to various processes found in industry. The aim is to produce two or three options that can be adjusted easily for different applications, thereby reducing overall costs by mass production of the units rather than developing ad hoc solutions for each system.

Prof Brandani said: “Emissions from power plants represent only one third of overall carbon emissions and developing solutions for industrial emissions is a key requirement if we are to meet the challenge of achieving 80% reductions in emissions by 2050.”

A compact CO2 capture process to combat industrial emissions (£1.2m project) 

Principal Investigator: Dr Xianfeng Fan, Edinburgh University, School of Engineering

This project, led by the University of Edinburgh, is a collaboration of scientists from the university with Newcastle University, the University of Hull and industry partners Global Technology/SK innovation, Ferrite Microwave Technologies, Tan Delta Microwaves Ltd, Carbon Clean Solutions Ltd and the UK-China (Guangdong) CCUS Centre.

Dr Xianfeng Fan said: “CO2 emissions from industry are typically from a number of small, low concentration sources with a wide range of flue gas compositions and impurity profiles. That means it’s useful to have several compact and flexible capture units, with low operating and capital costs and high efficiency.

“Our work will combine two technologies that will enable such devices to be installed at a wide range of industrial sites.”