TAKING THE GUESSWORK OUT OF CARBON MIGITATION DATA

By Ron Beck, Senior Director, AspenTech

Today’s industries are facing a dual challenge. They need to meet the growing demand for resources from an expanding global population (10 billion by 2050) and to raise living standards for those that are currently under-served. With more than half of the world’s population projected to be in the middle class by 2030, levels of demand will surely hit unprecedented heights. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) is already projecting that global energy demand will grow by 50% by 2050.

Simultaneously, there is the urgent need to meet sustainability goals for the good of the planet, by supporting the energy transition and decarbonising to achieve net zero by 2050. The pressure is on to redress the balance and become more sustainable. So how can organisations demonstrate the steps they are taking to make optimal use of limited resources?

Why Carbon Capture Matters

One key way is through accelerating digital transformation initiatives to keep sustainability targets on track.

The technologies of carbon capture and storThe technologies of carbon capture and storage (CCS) will be key. Worldwide, the number of carbon capture projects has exploded in recent years, with 35 commercial installations – including many in Europe – in operation or under construction, and more than 200 others in development, including several at very large scale.

The uptick has been driven by significant investments and incentives from governments globally. Driving much of that investment is the long-term goal of carbon capture technologies to remove millions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. Broadly speaking, carbon capture systems work in one of two ways. Firstly, point-source systems remove CO2 from industrial flue gases before it enters the atmosphere. The second technology is direct air capture (DAC), which removes CO2 directly from the atmosphere using large fans and chemistry. This is at lower concentration than carbon capture, but whereas CCS could enable a company to hit zero emissions, DAC could, by removing more carbon that a company emits, give it a lower-then-zero profile, which is what the UN terms “carbon removal”. These technologies have become more efficient and can give businesses a 20% reduction in emissions.

Once captured, the CO2 can be compressed and transported to other locations for carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) or injected into underground storage sites for storage. According to estimates, the projects which have already been announced have potential capacity to eventually remove 550 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere a year, with an annual value of more than $50 billion.

The Case For Carbon Capture

Currently, however, carbon capture is expensive. The transport, storage and monitoring of captured carbon (sequestered in former North Sea oil and gas fields, for example) are all challenging. For the time being, subsidies and carbon offsets render the costs acceptable, but embedding digital technology is likely to lead to economic breakthroughs.

What tips the balance in favour of greater sustainability is the use of sophisticated modelling techniques using the explosion in data in asset-intensive organisations. Businesses in energy-intensive sectors such as cement, aerospace, fertiliser and steel production can deploy these techniques to chart the way forward, making extremely important strategic decisions about sustainability and carbon-reduction on the basis of evidence and accurate forecasting. This will achieve the right balance between emissions, reduction initiatives and profitability, and take into account the optimisation of energy security requirements – now more urgent because of the after-effects of war in Ukraine.

Able to harness the full potential of data, big carbon-emitting businesses can grasp the full potential of CO2 reduction or capture. They can use software analytics to identify which part of their processes or which assets are responsible for their most significant CO2 emissions.

These are vital insights. It is only once an organisation knows where its biggest emissions come from that it can employ digital predictive models to explore the options for reductions, using insights that support effective real-time decisions.

Data modelling is the difference here because it will also uncover where an organisation is falling behind in energy-efficiency. Somewhat surprisingly, the execution of many large companies is worse than they realise. Digitalisation to make more effective use of energy will hand them 20% gains, reducing emissions while increasing margins.

Carbon emissions initiatives should not stop there, however. The ambition in manufacturing should be to move to sustainable, low carbon bio-feedstock sources that can further slim down emissions by another 10%. Switching to green electricity or geo-thermal energy is another important step for organisations running on diesel, natural gas or the conventional power grid.

Renewable energy sources and microgrids are also options. Microgrids are flexible, local electricity distribution grids that a company manages directly on-site for maximum efficiency in electricity use and which increase resilience should the public power system experience outages or brownouts and to enable industry to sell excess power into the larger grid. In the longer run, hydrogen could well be a clean alternative to fossil fuel sources. While the economics remain difficult they are improving rapidly and companies like Air Products believe that sustainable hydrogen users will not need to pay a green premium within 5-10 years.

Digitalisation Drives Ccus Operation And Innovation

The innovations critical to making carbon capture a viable sustainability solution would not have been possible without the use of digital technology to optimise the design and operation of capture systems.

To gain a full picture of how different carbon capture systems work, Technology Center Mongstad, a leading testing and innovation centre based in Norway, has developed an integrated data collection and modelling system to evaluate the performance of different technologies and solvents and how they can be scaled up. Such systems can provide insights into solvent degradation and reclamation, emission abatement options, control of process temperatures and help target the best points in the emissions stream to remove carbon.

In addition, the centre is working with AspenTech to examine the use of the same models as operator training platforms for carbon capture systems. That training will be critical, given the rapid scale up of carbon capture technology and the role it will play in the global economy.

One of the world’s largest Direct Air Capture (DAC) projects is the Bison Project in Wyoming, which is beginning operation this year at 10,000 tons per year CO2 removal and will reach 5 megatons per year removal by 2030. Founder Bill Gross has credited AspenTech modelling and AI digitalisation for the rapid pace and scale of this project.

It is clear digital technology and optimisation have a significant role to play in accelerating the commercialisation of carbon capture technology. For firms in capital-intensive industries to reach their net zero targets, it makes sense for companies to work towards optimising capture and storage together.

From evaluating possible storage sites to optimising designs, to developing effective execution plans, digital technologies allow companies to optimise all stages of a project, and to monitor carbon stored underground. Digitalisation will transform how companies adapt and incorporate radical new carbon reduction techniques – from conceptualisation to design, implementation and monitoring.

In addition, digital technology will be essential during the operation of sustainable assets and their carbon management systems, as it enables reliable, transparent, and auditable records of the performance of the carbon capture systems and storage reservoirs.

As the world continues to find ways to manage the effects of climate change, CCUS will prove to be an important tool in that fight, one made all the more critical by the increasing global demand for energy. Ultimately, regardless of where companies are in the journey to net zero carbon, it is important to partner with technology leaders with the expertise to meet the dual challenge by helping achieve critical sustainability goals while driving operational excellence.