A group of shipping partners, including NYK, Sovcomflot, Knutsen OAS and Ardmore, ship builders, including DSME, and the mining company Vale, are cooperating with Danish Maritime Development Centre to develop an onboard carbon capture and storage solution, in a project called decarbonICE.
The project began on October 2019 and will run through 2020; The partners’ goal is to ready a feasibility study, present it to the IMO to initiate the approval process for the technology.
The DecarbonIce project aims to solve shipping’s carbon emissions issue, already being fully supported by a number of key shipping players.
The DecarbonIce project consists of two parts; The capture and the storage.
How the project will work is that it will capture any CO2 and other GHG emissions produced in the ship exhaust in a cryogenic process and will turn them into dry ice.
Then, offshore technology is applied during the vessel’s operations in order to transmit the dry ice into the seafloor sediments, where the CO2 will be securely and permanently kept as liquid CO2 and CO2 hydrate.
Moreover, the technology is ideal for newbuildings, yet it could be also used on existing ships, boosting the chances to fasten the transition towards IMO’s targets. The technology, in combination with future neutral fuels, such as biofuels and electro fuels, will create a carbon-neutral shipping environment and play a crucial role in reducing carbon emissions with lower cost in comparison to shore-based carbon capture.
The project is led by former DNV GL head Henrik Madsen, who commented that
While we support a final goal of availability of zero carbon or carbon neutral fuels, we believe that a bridging carbon free solution is needed, which can utilize existing assets in terms of ships, propulsion systems and fuels. The decarbonICE project is intended to offer exactly that, and at a predicted low energy penalty well below 10%.
Concluding, Odin KWON, CTO of DSME added that on-board carbon capture with subsequent storage at appropriate sites may also qualify as a carbon free solution.
