Inventys partners with Total and Lafarge to bring carbon capture program to British Columbia

Inventys has  announced a project partnership to develop and demonstrate the first full-cycle solution to capture and reuse CO₂ from a cement plant while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Project CO₂MENT will demonstrate and evaluate Inventys' CO₂ Capture System and a selection of CO₂ utilization technologies at Lafarge's Richmond, BC, cement plant over the next four years. This project is led by Inventys in partnership with Lafarge Canada Inc., a member of the global building materials group, LafargeHolcim, and Total, a major energy company. It also received financial support from CCP (CO₂ Capture Project), the Province of B.C., and Canada's federal government through the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP). 

"At Inventys, we see a real opportunity to build a CO₂ marketplace where tonnes of CO₂ are traded between emitters and users," said Inventys President & CEO Claude Letourneau. "This project provides an opportunity for global industry leaders to work together using everyone's expertise to create new business models while fighting climate change." Project CO₂MENT received $150,000 through the B.C. government's Innovative Clean Energy (ICE) Fund, which provides funding to projects that align with B.C.'s climate goals, while also supporting a thriving clean-energy sector. 

"Project CO₂MENT is a great example of how made-in-B.C. innovations and technology are putting us on the path to a cleaner, better future," said Michelle Mungall, Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. "Like other projects supported by the Innovative Clean Energy Fund, it will help achieve our government's CleanBC plan to reduce climate pollution, boost the economy, and create good jobs." 

Lafarge's Richmond cement plant has been building in Canada for over 60 years. In a drive towards its 2030 Sustainability goals, Lafarge recently expanded its low carbon fuel program with the addition of a $28 million system to use non-recyclable waste as fuel. This new fuel system will make Richmond the most carbon efficient cement plant in Canada. More than a million tons of cement is produced per year in Richmond, making it a large emitter of CO2 in British Columbia. 

"It takes intensive energy to heat limestone to the level necessary for its transformation into cement and the chemical reaction itself produces CO2 so we are very interested in researching ways to capture these emissions and reuse them in our concrete products." Lafarge Western Canada CEO, Brad Kohl said.

"Total is delighted to invest and support the CO2MENT project that demonstrates effectiveness and robustness of technologies to capture CO2 from real industrial flue gas. This is an important step forward to make CCUS an economic solution", says Samuel Lethier, Total CO2 Capture R&D Project Manager. "Total is committed to invest 10% of its annual R&D investment into Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage that will play an essential role in achieving carbon neutrality in the second half of the century." 

CCP Board Chair, Jonathan Forsyth comments: "This is an exciting project for CCP to be joining. CCP as an International capture and storage technology innovation programme have always put a focus on new technology development that will advance CCS. Our participation in Phase II of CO₂MENT aligns with that and, if successful, the project could create another potential solution that reduces the cost of capturing CO2 from industry applications." 

The project provides an opportunity to evaluate the potential for a new business model for supplying post-combustion CO₂ to the existing CO₂ market as well as assessing the economic feasibility of newly developed CO₂ utilization technologies. "Using the CO₂ as a raw material, especially when coupled with BC's renewable energy, could potentially generate profits to subsidize the costs of CO₂ capture and enable a use in a region where storage can't exist," said Inventys Co-Founder and VP of Strategic Accounts, Brett Henkel. "Our objective is to see if a commercial scale project can provide a business case for up to 3,000 tons of CO2 per day, preventing those emissions from going to the atmosphere." 

The objectives of Project CO₂MENT are as follows: 

• PHASE I - The Contaminant Program : Reduce harmful organic and inorganic substances, such as sulphur dioxide, dust and soot, as well as nitrogen oxides, from cement flue gas; 
• PHASE II - The CO₂ Capture Program: Separate the CO₂ from flue gas using a customized-forcement version of Inventys' carbon capture technology at pilot scale; 
• PHASE III - The CO₂ Reuse Program: Prepare post-combustion CO₂ for reuse and support the economical assessment and demonstration of CO₂ conversion technologies onsite, such as CO₂injected concrete and fly ash. 

Funding for the first two phases is complete and development of Phase I is underway. Phase I will begin operation in 2019; followed by Phase II & III in 2020.