The final aim of the AURORA project is to qualify the CESAR1 solvent for commercial deployment and to establish this solvent and its associated absorption process as the new benchmark for CO2 capture. This requires that the performance of the solvent is known and that any risks in the deployment of full-scale carbon capture projects with the CESAR1 solvent are identified and solutions to how these risks can be mitigated are established.

Conventional absorber/desorber process flowsheet

After one year of discussions in meetings and workshops, ACC together with SINTEF and some other partners have developed and established the methodology and guidelines for how this will be approached in the AURORA project. To establish the new benchmark, the CESAR1 solvent system will be benchmarked against the present state-of the-art technology, 30wt% MEA for the three sectors represented by the four end-users of AURORA (cement, refinery, and materials recycling). The methodology is based on the European Benchmarking Taskforce methodology established around 2010 for powerplant integrated with CO2 capture and adjusted for the application in the three sectors relevant for AURORA. The qualification procedure is based on the recommended practises by DNVGL and the experiences by ACC through the TCM and Heidelberg materials projects.

The whole methodology will be made available at the end of this year, stay tuned!