It’s time to summarise the fifth season of our BECCS research facility. Another year of diligent and methodical work has allowed us to refine the processes and get even more ready to use the technology in the full-scale facility – because that’s what we strive for every day and every shift. We use the research facility to train our staff and to build experience for construction, design, documentation and storage at the full-scale plant.

This season we have become an even stronger team, another test engineer has been trained, and with more of us, we can conduct more qualified tests and make even better progress. This season we have continued our collaboration with the research group from KTH (the Royal Institute of Technology) and within the framework of that collaboration, a degree project has been done. We have also rebuilt and carried out further calibrations of the facility so that we can increase the precision of the tests.

In concrete terms, this season’s work has included, for example, conducting final analyses for quality control of outgoing carbon dioxide, conducting material tests to investigate corrosion rate, pitting and inhibition capacity, modelling flue gas design by adding oxygen in the combustion air, and conducting ongoing screenings of various carbon dioxide capture concepts in other major plants here at Stockholm Exergi. We have also carried out a full CCU(S) study which indicates that if any use of carbon dioxide is to be made – instead of permanent imobilisation of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – then SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel) is the closest.

This may be a bit of difficult language for those of you who do not work with BECCS on a daily basis, but in short, it can be summarised by saying that we have tested, received several answers and taken our technology forward. And our technology interests the world. It is great to work with a project that so many people are interested in visiting. I don’t know if we are leaving a record year behind us for external interest in our research facility, but there has been a lot of interest – at least that’s what I can say.

We’re taking some time off now, but we’ll be back in action after the summer!

Erik Dahlén
Manager research and development in process technology