Oslo-based Aqualung Carbon Capture, a provider of membrane CO2 capture technology, has completed new equity investment from several partners worth $10 mill.
The partners included Delek US, Global Ship Lease, Golar LNG, MKS Pamp and Standard Lithium.
As a result, representatives from Golar LNG and Standard Lithium will join Aqualung’s Board.
The company explained that it will utilise the funds to increase its team across Europe and the US, deliver its first commercial pilot with Standard Lithium and initiate commercialisation projects with key industrial suppliers in order to achieve its objective of providing large scale commercial units before 2025.
Proof of concept has been achieved for the technology with installations at two cement works and the company said that it was embarking on the next step to industrialise its coating process and deliver a containerised commercial unit.
Aqualung will initiate this scale up in collaboration with Standard Lithium at a CO2 capture pilot plant, which will demonstrate the efficacy of the technology on low CO2 concentration levels.
This pilot project will unlock a significant number of hard-to-abate emitters and also set up Aqualung to optimise its solution for higher CO2 concentration markets.
Strong interest
The cost, weight, low complexity and small footprint advantage has garnered strong interest from the LNG/maritime sector as confirmed by the investors, the company said.
Talking specifically about the LNG space, Andrew Robbins, Aqualung CEO, told LNG Shipping News: “Aqualung and Golar are looking to deploy the technology across the entire LNG supply chain. FLNGs are a natural fit, as we can collectively offer a blue LNG molecule to Golar’s customers and also undertake site sequestration. This concept would represent the lowest CO2 LNG footprint globally.
“We believe the FSRU market is another area of high ~interest, as industrial emitters are co-located near the FSRU, which means more aggregation volumes for a sequestration project. The LNGCs are also interesting but storage requirements and logistics of offload between destinations is going to be the largest hurdle to overcome.
“That being said we believe our partner, Golar, has some of the best knowledge and know-how in the world as it relates to space constraint optimisation and liquefaction integration.
“The Aqualung unit can either be retrofitted or installed at the newbuilding stage. A newbuild will be easier to engineer around. Aqualung is extremely excited to deploy the technology alongside Golar to further decarbonise the already lowest CO2 fossil fuel source,” he concluded.
Affordable carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) projects have a critical role to play in creating a reliable, sustainable and energy independent future.
It is one of a host of technologies that will be required to tackle global climate change at the pace and scale needed, the company added.
