Sulzer Chemtech and Blue Planet announce partnership to help address climate change
Sulzer Chemtech is enabling the further development and optimization of Blue Planet’s innovative carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) solutions. The groundbreaking process will leverage Sulzer Chemtech’s advanced carbon reduction technologies for carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in industrial applications while producing highly sustainable aggregates.
Blue Planet is developing a profitable CCUS system that removes CO2 diluted in flue gases and uses it directly to form carbonates for mineralization in the form of construction-grade aggregates, offering a sustainable building block for net carbon neutral or carbon negative concrete. As a result, the solution can off-set cement’s greenhouse gas emissions by permanently sequestering CO2 in concrete as aggregate and improve the sustainability of cement manufacturing and other CO2 emitting industries. The traditional cement production processes accounts for approximately 7% of global CO2 emissions1 , which can be off-set by replacing the main component of concrete, the aggregates, with Blue Planet mineralized CO2 material.
Sulzer Chemtech, the leader in separation and mixing technology, is developing an efficient and effective carbon capture unit that will help Blue Planet’s CCUS process reach its full potential. This will be installed in Blue Planet’s pilot plant, which is being constructed in Pittsburgh, CA, U.S.A, and will capture emissions from an adjacent natural gas-fired power plant.
The facility will leverage Sulzer Chemtech’s advanced mass transfer components that have been specifically developed to support carbon reduction applications, such as MellaPakCC™ structured packing. This provides high CO2 absorption performance while maintaining low energy consumption. As a result, Blue Planet’s facility will be able to leverage a cost-effective setup to maximize the greenhouse gas reduction from various industrial activities and utilize for the production of synthetic limestone and other carbonate minerals.
In addition to these proven solutions, Sulzer Chemtech’s global Bio-based and Renewables application development team will provide dedicated engineering support to further optimize the process steps.
Brent R. Constantz, Ph.D., CEO at Blue Planet, comments: “Sulzer Chemtech is an ideal partner to help us meet our goal of delivering cost and energy efficient CCUS plants to permanently store CO2 in concrete by producing sustainable cement and concrete with Blue Planet’s CO2 capture and mineralization technology. Together, we will be able to offer market leading solutions to help businesses reduce their carbon footprint.”
Torsten Wintergerste, President Sulzer Chemtech, concludes: “We are delighted to be part of such a cutting-edge project that will help reduce carbon emissions from industrial applications as well as the cement sector. This further demonstrates how our state-of-the-art separation technologies and know-how can support demanding CCUS applications.”
1 IEA (2020), Cement, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/cement
About Sulzer
Sulzer is a global leader in fluid engineering. We specialize in pumping, agitation, mixing, separation and application technologies for fluids of all types. Our customers benefit from our commitment to innovation, performance and quality and from our responsive network of 180 world-class manufacturing facilities and service centers across the globe. Sulzer has been headquartered in Winterthur, Switzerland, since 1834. In 2020, our 15’000 employees delivered revenues of CHF 3.3 billion. Our shares are traded on the SIX Swiss Exchange (SIX: SUN).
The Chemtech division is the global market leader in innovative mass transfer, static mixing and polymer solutions for petrochemicals, refining and LNG. Chemtech is also leading the way in ecological solutions such as biopolymers as well as textile and plastic recycling, contributing to a circular economy. Our product offering ranges from technology licensing to process components all the way to complete separation process plants. Customer support ranges from engineering and field services to tray and packing installation, tower maintenance, welding and plant turnaround projects – ensuring minimal downtime.
