The world’s first carbon capture pilot for smelters has been officially inaugurated. The Mobile Test Unit (MTU), delivered by Aker Carbon Capture, is now connected to Elkem’s plant in Rana, Norway, which produces high-purity ferrosilicon and microsilica.

The carbon capture pilot testing is a collaboration between Elkem, Mo Industripark, SMA Mineral, SINTEF, Alcoa, Celsa Group, Ferroglobe PLC, Norcem AS, NorFraKalk AS, ACT Cluster and Aker Carbon Capture. With full-scale implementation, 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 can be captured from their combined emissions. In a couple of months, testing will commence at SMA Mineral.

Amund Vik, Deputy Minister from the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, spoke at the ceremony. He said: “There is no doubt that we need carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) to reach our climate targets. We need CCS in hard-to-abate industries to keep industrial jobs in Europe. This pilot will provide important learning related to CO2-capture in metal industries, and will be an important hub for other companies in the Industrial Park to test CO2-capture technology”.

“The Mobile Test Unit was built in 2008 and has continuously been upgraded in accordance with our latest technology developments. Aker Carbon Capture can therefore offer our customers a unique opportunity to test our technology at their site and de-risk the project prior to a possible full-scale implementation. It is truly great to officially kick off this project today with all our partners in Rana,” says Valborg Lundegaard, Chief Executive Officer at Aker Carbon Capture.

”Elkem is very pleased to be a part of this pilot. The world needs more metals and other materials to succeed with the green transition, but we also need to achieve lower global CO2 emissions. Carbon capture can potentially contribute significantly towards our global climate roadmap of reducing emissions towards net zero while growing supplies to the green transition. At the same time, Elkem is dependent on our stakeholders to enable green technologies at an industrial scale. That is why we are particularly pleased about the good collaboration between several partners in this project, and we will monitor the results of the pilot closely,” says Elkem’s CEO Helge Aasen.

Elkem’s plant in Rana, Norway, was established in 1989 and today has around 140 employees. It produces speciality ferrosilicon products and microsilica based on renewable hydropower.

The pilot test is part of a larger R&D project, CO2 HUB Nord, which runs over two years and is funded by Climit Demo. The main goal of the project is to verify the technology on real industrial gases from smelters and other process industries, in order to prepare a full-scale plant for industrial carbon capture.

Through development and verification of new technology for carbon capture, the CO2-HUB Nord accelerates innovation and industrialization of the carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) value chain. Industrialization of such technology is considered as an important contributor to reducing CO2 emissions and delivering on the global sustainability goals.