ECR Alumni Case Study – Suzie Ferguson

What did you study at university? 

I always wanted to do something to protect the environment and combat climate change, so I originally applied for Environmental Engineering.  I remember at a careers fair when I was still an A-Level student, meeting someone from Southampton University who said “if you want to study environmental problems, do Environmental Science, but if you want to fix them, do Environmental Engineering”.  Looking back, I can’t speak for how fair this is on the Environmental Science community, probably not very, but this was a key moment inspiring me to do engineering, so that I could prevent environmental degradation from inside the companies in the greatest position to influence it.

The Environmental Engineering course specialisation was actually cut just before I joined, as it was almost the same as the main Chemical Engineering course at the University of Surrey, which I then studied instead.  I did the 5-year programme which includes one year in industry and ends directly with a masters’ rather than getting a bachelors’ first.

I did three industrial placements during my degree, which were invaluable experiences of working on different operating sites, giving me experience that I’ve called upon throughout my career as well as being very useful for getting chartered.  My first placement was for ten months at BP Coryton refinery where I focused on environmental impact reduction. The second internship was with Tate and Lyle at its alcho-chemicals plant near Cali in Colombia, where I was involved in an employee-led improvements programme, including safety reviews.  My final placement was with Astra-Zeneca in Macclesfield focusing on process design changes required to support transition of a product line from batch to continuous operation.  This range of experience was really fortunate as it gave me a view of very different types of industries, which led me to realise I liked this variety.  This realisation influenced my choice to go into an engineering company rather than an operating company after graduation.

What’s your current role, and career journey to this point?  

I joined Foster Wheeler in Reading as a graduate in 2004 and within three years I joined our consulting group in a team focused on carbon capture, where I have worked for the majority of my time ever since.  Foster Wheeler became Amec Foster Wheeler, which then became Wood, joining the Sidara family of companies formally just this year, but this has not really changed how the Reading office operates or the main activities and projects the group does.  As part of a wider organisation, though, I’ve been able to work on a huge range of different energy transition projects as well as full chain CCS projects.  Where Foster Wheeler had great CO₂ capture and energy experience, the newer wider organisation adds to this with CO₂ transportation and storage expertise, hydrogen and renewables expertise.  I love working in teams with such a wide range of experts in their field, all based in different parts of the world.

I have also been assigned to three very different projects which have required living overseas, with the first happening just 18 months after joining the company.  During a five-month placement working on the early stages of an LNG liquefaction project, I was based at a client’s office in the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. Two years later, I was assigned to our own office in Milan, working on a pre-combustion CCS power plant design for the Middle East. My longest assignment was over a year, during a period of lower CCS workload, when I worked from our Dubai office on a project involved in redevelopment of infrastructure in Iraq.

(L) – Suzie on an early career assignment in Milan (R) – Suzie with her son in the Dubai office

My current role can be very varied, which is both stimulating and challenging.  As a subject matter expert in CO² capture technologies, particularly post combustion CO₂ capture, I often support many projects at once, providing technical oversight and answering technical questions.  I usually also have one ongoing project that I can get my teeth into, where I might be leading conceptual or feasibility level design of potential post combustion CO₂ capture units for a particular site, exploring how best to integrate heat, route flue gases and source the most appropriate cooling medium.

A lot of my work is on confidential projects, before they are announced, but occasionally we can put our learnings into the public domain and three examples spring to mind.

The first is a project which ran for several years and finished in 2018, in which we developed benchmarks for the technical and economic performance of a range of fossil and biomass power plants and hydrogen plants using different CO₂ capture methods.  This work was then used by the UK government as input data to their overall UK energy system model.  Despite being a few years old now, this work is still often a really useful reference, and its main deliverables can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/call-for-ccus-innovation-literature-review-benchmarking-report-and-calculator.

The second example was a programme of work with novel non-amine solvent CO₂ capture technology developer C-Capture, involving deployment of three solvent compatibility test units to several energy intensive industries, including glass manufacturing, cement manufacturing and energy from waste.  During this programme, which was part-funded by the UK government, the emitter sites and Wood, I led feasibility studies on scaling up the C-Capture technology for each of these sites.  It was great working with both the site teams and the C-Capture team to demonstrate the potential of this exciting technology.

Suzie at COP26 during Covid

The most recent project example is a Joint Industry Programme (JIP) for the creation of “Industry Guidelines for Setting the CO₂ Specification in CCUS Chains” where I was heavily involved in the section on the impact of impurities from different industries on CO₂ capture processes and how these impurities can be removed.  This overall programme included inputs from hundreds of experts supported by 12 different companies deeply involved in CCS. The download page is by far the most popular part of Wood’s website!  This work also doesn’t stand still, and I have been involved in several subsequent studies exploring different aspects of the impact of impurities in CCS changes since this guidance was published https://www.woodgroup.com/insights/reports/Industry-Guidelines-for-Setting-the-CO2-Specification-in-CCUS-Chains

My favourite career highlight came through my involvement with the CCSA and due to Wood’s involvement in the HyNet project.  Since the CCSA is an official observer organisation for the UNFCCC COP meetings, I had the opportunity to attend COP26 in Glasgow as an observer. I was even lucky enough to have an opportunity to speak, for two minutes, on the benefits of the HyNet project for decarbonisation of industry. Since I was first inspired to pursue a career in climate change prevention and mitigation by the UN’s processes, this was very exciting for me!

When did you engage with the UKCCSRC, and how has it been part of your journey?

I’ve followed the UKCCSRC’s work for many years, including attending events, but mostly by being part of the Advisory Council and reviewing research proposals.  This is a really interesting role as it allows me to help connect what we are learning in industry with areas of research in the academic community, and provide insights on research areas which will really help move the CCS industry forward.

What other thoughts would you like to share about CCS, e.g. its present, its future, any concerns?

Suzie speaking at GHGT11 in Kyoto

I often take part in projects which compare different decarbonisation options for industries and specific plants where a range of CCS options are compared with fuel switching to green or blue hydrogen, electrification or sometimes a complete change from fossil to renewable feedstocks and products.  Unfortunately, these studies are confidential, and the conclusions for one site are often different to another.  However, it is usually still the case that addition of post combustion CO₂ capture to existing large sources of fossil emissions is a very cost-effective way to make deep cuts to fossil CO₂ emissions, using technologies already proven at the scale required.

My largest concern is that politics rather than engineering or even economics, is what is holding us back from making much deeper reductions in fossil CO₂ emissions in the near term.  I sometimes wonder if I should have chosen politics rather than engineering to have been able to make a greater impact on mitigating climate change!

However, there are so many benefits of the energy transition, including CCS, that I am optimistic that any reduction in momentum just now will only be short lived, and we can keep doing what we do best – working together to make the engineering solutions to climate change a widely deployed reality.