A consortium of 11 European stakeholders including ArcelorMittal, Axens, IFP Energies nouvelles (IFPEN) and Total, has launched a project to demonstrate an innovative process for capturing CO2 from industrial activities: the DMX project. It is part of a more comprehensive study dedicated to the development of the future European Dunkirk North Sea Capture and Storage Cluster.

The “3D” project (for DMX Demonstration in Dunkirk) is part of Horizon 2020, the European Union’s research and innovation program. The project has a €19.3-million budget over 4 years, including €14.8 million in European Union subsidies.

Coordinated by IFPEN, the “3D” project brings together 10 other partners from research and industry from 6 European countries: ArcelorMittal, Axens, Total, ACP, Brevik Engineering, CMI, DTU, Gassco, RWTH and Uetikon.

The objective is threefold:

1. Demonstrate the effectiveness of the DMX process on a pilot industrial scale. The pilot, designed by Axens, will be built starting in 2020 at the ArcelorMittal steelworks site in Dunkirk and will be able to capture 0.5 metric tons of CO₂ an hour from steelmaking gases by 2021.

   In post-combustion capture, CO₂ is separated from other gases by absorption in a chemical solvent. Currently, the challenge facing research is to significantly increase the energy performances in this stage to make this process more competitive.

   The DMX process, a patented process stemming from IFPEN’s Research and to be marketed by Axens, uses a solvent that reduces the energy consumption for capture by nearly 35% compared to the reference process. Additionally, using the heat produced on site will cut capture costs in half, to less than €30 per metric ton of CO₂.

2. Prepare the implementation of a first industrial unit at the ArcelorMittal site in Dunkirk, which could be operational starting in 2025. It should be able to capture more than 125 metric tons of CO₂ an hour, i.e. more than one million metric tons of CO₂ a year.

3. Design the future European Dunkirk North Sea Cluster, which should be able to capture, pack, transport and store 10 million metric tons of CO₂ a year and should be operational by the year 2035. This cluster will be backed up by the packing and transport infrastructures for storing CO₂ in the North Sea developed by other projects such as the Northern Lights project in which Total is already involved.

Resources

• Ludovic Raynal, Patrick Briot, Matthieu Dreillard, Paul Broutin, Angela Mangiaracina, Benedetta Salghetti Drioli, Monia Politi, Cristiana La Marca, Jan Mertens, Marie-Laure Thielens, Géraldine Laborie, Laurent Normand (2014) “Evaluation of the DMX Process for Industrial Pilot Demonstration – Methodology and Results,” Energy Procedia, Volume 63, Pages 6298-6309 doi: 10.1016/j.egypro.2014.11.662