A Chemical Engineering Perspective on the Challenges and Opportunities of Installing Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) at Commercial Scale – April 2018

The presentation will give a preview of an IChemE Energy Centre Green Paper on Carbon Capture and Storage to be launched in April.  It will summarise the key issues and recommendations, which focus on overcoming the current barriers to commercialisation of CCS projects where there is no clear route to monetising the stored CO₂ (for instance via enhanced oil recovery or an effective carbon pricing mechanism).  These emphasise the need for a systems engineering approach, creative business models which share the risk between governments and private investors and building full-scale plants which benefit from the economies of scale and process improvement from ‘learning-by-doing’ with successive plants.  The major opportunities for chemical engineers in making widespread CCS a commercial reality as a key process in reaching the challenging global carbon mitigation targets agreed in Paris in 2015 will also be discussed.