UKCCSRC Conference 2026 – Plenary 1: CO2 Capture (ECR Meeting Fund)

Nicholas Landon (University of Nottingham), Freya Bretton (University of Edinburgh) and Usman Ali (Net Zero Industry Innovation Centre, Teesside University) share their takeaways from the “Plenary 1: Co2 Capture” session at the UKCCSRC Conference 2026.

While the UKCCSRC conferences allow researchers and industry from a wide variety of areas of the CCS sector to come together and share knowledge, the central focus will always be the carbon capture aspect itself, without which there would be no need for advancements in materials, storage, policy, etc. As seen in the CO₂ Capture Plenary, the research being conducted focuses on improving the technology’s performance and economics, both necessary fields to ensure CCS operates as effectively as possible.

The session’s opening speaker, Stavros Michailos, University of Hull, demonstrated this with his research modelling the operation of CO₂ absorption stacks under different operating conditions, with the aim to achieve capture rates upwards of 95% – a necessity for post-combustion capture to be more widely deployed. After highlighting the key parameters investigated and discussing the process followed in the work, Stavros explained the results obtained from the various ASPEN studies conducted: from altering the rich loading of the MEA solvent and then the operating pressure to discover the effect on reboiler duty, to showing the optimum operation window for CO₂ absorption – though 100% capture was found to not be achievable.

Thermal reclaiming of the solvent was a large focus for Stavros’ talk, with the model prepared in ASPEN using pilot-scale data and operating at one- or two-stage reclamation for MEA, using HEEDA as a thermal proxy. The findings that solvent recovery could reach up to 97% for one-stage, with lower degradation at two-stage, alongside the fact that the additional electricity loss from adding reclaiming was only 0.8%, show promise that CO₂ capture technologies can be highly efficient without dramatically reducing plant efficiency, though this work is still limited by the bounds of the model and capabilities of the modelling software. A concluding look at the techno-economics of this work determines that once the capital expenditure of the systems is established (the largest cost driver), achieving 100% capture is economically viable, assuming electricity prices are lowered while carbon prices rise. Stavros provided a detailed overview of the challenge of achieving high capture rates, but demonstrated the work being done to ready the technology for large-scale deployment.

Following Stavros, we heard from Daniel Mullen from SSE Thermal, who joined us online and delivered an insightful talk on “Delivering Flexible, Low Carbon & Dispatchable Power”. Daniel opened his talk with a stark reminder on the importance of conditional nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and net-zero pledges on limiting global warming to below a specified temperature limit.

He first discussed the importance of understanding the effects of carbon capture storage plants on thermal power station operation, the results of which are soon to be published. Key insights from the study were shared, including the challenges of dynamic operation and flexibility between the thermal power plant and the carbon capture plant and substantially increased cooling duty, to name a couple.

The effect of the net power output, the CO₂ capture capacity, and flue gas flow rate to the carbon capture plant (CCP) on the footprint of the CCP for various existing combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plants was shown, with all parameters increasing the footprint required. Finally, the CAPEX associated with the corresponding CO₂ capture rate was presented, showing the capital investment required for CCP integration with CCGT, highlighting the engineering and economic considerations that must be addressed before large-scale deployment of carbon capture at CCGT plants.

The third speaker was Jon Gibbins, UKCCSRC Director. His talk was about the high capture rates required for net zero and he shared his experiences from the COGENT project tests results from China. The three main principles of obtaining ultra-high capture rates are: produce the lowest possible lean loading without wasted energy; use the lean solvent flowrate which gives the optimum capture rate and rich loading; and operate the desorber and absorber independently for shorter intervals.

COGENT stands for Capture Operation with Greater Economy for Net-zero Targets which was run at Guangdong Carbon Capture Test Platform with the capacity of ~40 tCO₂/day. A visit was made in August 2024 to discuss the theory behind ultra-high CO₂ capture rates with the Heifang capture plant team and selection of appropriate reboiler based on the industrial standard for the commercial-scale plant. Initial testing in 2024 confirmed the principles of desorber and absorber control at high capture rates and demonstrated 98 % capture rates with low reboiler energy, however, the performance was limited by the desorber pressure of about 1.9 bara. In the recent continuous 75-hour test runs at a desorber pressure of 2.4 bara driving a lower lean loading at the inflection point with a capture rate of ~100 % of the fossil CO₂ while achieving reasonable specific reboiler duty. The results also suggested appropriate control strategies to avoid delay in data signals. The talk was concluded with indicating the long-term plans for solvent management at reduced throughput, using realistic flue gas, continuous reclaiming, novel instrumentation and control, and ultra-low amine and degradation products.

Finally, all three speakers were invited to answer questions from the audience. The challenges facing future opportunities were answered by three speakers – pointing towards financial models that will be developed based around extremely high rates of availability and reliability. With the answer to the selection of novel solvents or MEA as solvent, Jon indicated that the MEA is a primary amine with two carbon atoms which can easily boil and when it degrades you will get polymers which can be easily reclaimed. This is not possible for secondary amines, because as a result of degradation there are nitrosamines which are unacceptable from a health risk point of view.