Dastur bags US carbon capture project

The New Jersey-based Dastur International, Inc, along with its affiliate company Dastur Energy Inc, and Air Liquide have bagged the US Department of Energy (US DOE)-funded FEED study project for the design and engineering of an industrial scale carbon capture plant at Air Liquide's Steam Methane Reformer (SMR) on the US Gulf Coast.

This has come close on the heels of Dastur Energy inking a pact with Icelandic environmental technology company Carbon Recycling International (CRI) for marketing, business development, technology licensing, design and engineering of CO2 to Methanol projects based on CRI's ETL technology in India.

The latest US project aims to capture 0.9 mtpa of CO2 with a net carbon capture efficiency of at least 95 per cent, enabling the production of clean or blue hydrogen. The funding opportunity is entitled "fossil energy based production, storage, transport and utilization of hydrogen approaching net zero." The FEED will be completed over a period of 18 months and the value of the award is nearly $7.5 million (Rs 62 crore).

Dastur will partner with sub-recipients, technology provider Air Liquide E&C Solutions USA and host site Air Liquide Large Industries, to provide a techno-economically efficient and cost-effective solution for the industrial scale decarbonization of hydrogen production. The project will aim to exploit the natural advantages of the US Gulf Coast in terms of availability of natural gas, geological formations for the permanent storage of CO2, availability of CO2 transportation infrastructure, and CO2 demand from downstream customers. The project can be a stepping stone for the US DoE's 1-1-1 Hydrogen Energy Earthshot program, which seeks to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen by 80 per cent to $1 per 1 kilogram in 1 decade.

"We are happy to receive this award from the US Department of Energy and believe that this project will be important for demonstrating clean hydrogen production from fossil fuels at an industrial scale with superior economics. Decarbonisation of the hard-to-abate industrial world and generation of clean energy carriers like hydrogen is key to a net-zero future, and this project will be an important landmark in establishing the US's leadership in this area," said Atanu Mukherjee, President and Chief Executive Officer of Dastur.

The project intends to use Air Liquide's state-of-the-art cryogenic technology, which runs on grid electricity, and will have lower secondary emissions compared to conventional amine-based carbon capture technology. With the increasing penetration of renewables in the grid, and decreasing grid emission intensity, the project will progressively reduce lifecycle CO2 emissions over time.

Along with its partners, Dastur will draw upon its own intellectual property and know-how in gas conditioning, system design and engineering, carbon capture technology and storage and sequestration expertise to engineer a flexible, scalable and cost-effective industrial-scale carbon capture and management solution. A successful and cost-effective industrial-scale solution could serve as a reference for production of blue hydrogen in the US, as well as in other geographies, said Mukherjee.