The CAPTUS Concept
Nowadays, due to ambitious climate policies, energy intensive industries (EIIs) are facing a major challenge: to remain competitive on globalized markets while taking steps to drastically reduce their carbon emissions. In this scenario, carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) will play a key role in this transition, and technologies at different levels of maturity and performance are being explored. The conversion of CO2 to high-value renewable energy carriers (RECs) using renewable electricity is a promising strategy to close the anthropogenic carbon cycle and meet reductions goals and energy requirements. Various conversion processes are available, but most are still demanding in terms of materials and energy, being costly and inefficient.
CAPTUS will demonstrate sustainable and cost-effective pathways to produce high-added value RECs in EIIs by valorizing industrial carbon emissions and integrating renewable electricity surplus. Three complete REC value chains will be demonstrated at 3 different demonstration sites:
1. A bioprocess based on a two-stage fermentation to produce triglycerides in a steel plant.
2. Lipids-rich microalgae cultivation followed by hydrothermal liquefaction to produce bio-oils in a chemical plant.
3. Electrochemical reduction of CO2 to produce formic acid in a cement plant.
In CAPTUS, the focus is on the production of liquid energy carriers from industrial flue gas dealing with CO2 at low concentrations and addressing also for the first time the optimal integration with renewable electricity surplus to reduce the increasingly renewable curtailments. CAPTUS will provide an industrial roadmap to a net-zero carbon future through EII-integrated solutions from both captured carbon emissions and its efficient conversion into liquid RECs.
Overall, in the mid-term, mitigation of emissions in the hard-to-abate sectors will rely on innovative technologies. For this reason, there is an increasing interest in scaling up CCU stages, which need to be supported by ex-ante analyses that evaluate their technology and economic feasibility. CAPTUS will tackle these challenges by speeding up several CCU technologies that are still in Technology-Readiness Levels (TRLs) lower than pilot and demonstration phase, by rolling out first-of-a-kind installations at real industrial sites.