Cryocap™ OXY: Capturing CO₂ when emissions are unavoidable
Published on December 24, 2024
2 minutes
What can be done when CO₂ emissions cannot be avoided? Industry accounts for more than 18% of CO₂ emissions worldwide1 and some sectors are particularly hard to abate. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is a solution that makes it possible to reduce the carbon footprint of the most emitting sectors, starting right now.
To this end, Air Liquide has designed Cryocap™, a range of innovative technologies used in ambitious projects in Europe. Learn more in pictures about one of the key solutions in this range: the Cryocap™ OXY.
What is Cryocap™? This technology works in three main stages:
- First, fumes rich in CO₂, obtained through oxy-combustion, are collected at the outlet of the industrial process.
- Next, the CO₂ is treated using cryogenics: it is cooled to very low temperatures (-50°C), cleaned of impurities, and pressurized to over 20 bar. This process condenses the CO₂, making it liquid and easily transportable.
- The captured CO₂ then reaches the final stage: it is either sequestered in permanent geological storage, such as depleted natural gas fields, or used in other industries, as a source of cold or to produce soft drinks, for example.
Cryocap™ OXY is part of the Cryocap™ range, which is particularly well suited to industries with high emissions that are difficult to abate, such as cement, metallurgy or glassmaking. Indeed, these sectors require combustions at high temperatures and Cryocap™ OXY can be coupled with the oxy-combustion technology, which consists in replacing air with pure oxygen in the combustion furnaces, in order to obtain CO₂ emissions that are more concentrated and, therefore, easier to capture.
Today, the solution is integrated into several large-scale projects in Europe. Among the most ambitious and promising ones is the K6 project in northern France, which should enable Europe's very first carbon-neutral cement plant to see the light of day by 2028. During its first ten years of operation, it will avoid the emission of 8 million tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere.
With its Cryocap™ technology, Air Liquide is demonstrating its ability to develop advanced solutions tailored to the needs of manufacturers, to support them in their energy transition.
