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Technology Centre Mongstad

Brief description:

Facts:

Main developer: Statoil

Country: Norway

Project type: Capture

Scale: Small

Objective:

Develop, test and qualify new CO₂capture technologies.

Status: Operative

Capital cost: 6,0 mrd NOK

Financal support:
Gassnova

Year of operation 2012

Industry: Oil and gas processing

Capture method: Post-combustion

Capture technology: Amine Ammonia

New or retrofit: Retrofit

Transport of CO2 by: none

Type of storage: Not decided

Volume: 100 000 tonnes/CO2

Photo: Marit Hommedal / StatoilHydro

The Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM) was officially launched on 7 May 2012. It has been constructed to capture and release up to 100,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. The centre is owned by Gassnova, which manages the state’s interests, Statoil, Shell and the South African company Sasol - which has a 2.44% stake.

In 2006, the Norwegian state and Statoil signed an agreement on the construction of a centre for testing and demonstration of CO2 capture technologies at Mongstad. The investment decision was made by the Storting (the Norwegian parliament) in May 2009. Initially, Alstom and Aker Solutions will test their technologies at the centre. However, TCM will be a significant Norwegian contribution to international development of technology and, following its launch, operators put out a call to international CCS developers to make use the test facility to trial their respective technologies.

The TCM will test CO₂ capture on two types of flue gases using two capture technologies. One source of emissions is the existing catalytic cracker facility at the Mongstad Refinery and the other is emissions from the gas-fired combined heat and power plant (CHP), which is under construction. Two technologies will be tested in parallel, amine technology and chilled ammonia technology. The choices of technologies were made by the TCM project on the basis of assessments of the technologies’ potential for improvements, possibilities of implementation as retrofit solutions, possibilities of full-scale application, technical maturity, environmental burden, and the possibilities of capture from sources such as coal, natural gas, and refining.

The planning of the TCM project began immediately after the emission permit was granted and the implementation agreement signed. The Ministry of Petroleum and Energy signed in June 2007 an agreement on cooperation with industrial participants in the planning and preparation of TCM. The Norwegian State’s interests in the agreement were transferred in October 2007 to the state enterprise Gassnova.

Aker and Alstom have already been testing their own CCS technologies at TCM and, in October 2012, Siemens, Hitachi, and Mitsubishi joined a number of companies bidding to follow in their footsteps.

In late 2012/early 2013, TCM launched an international test facility network, in order to exchange information and experience that seeks to promote the deployment of CCS worldwide.