Carbon capture is no longer a research topic, it is a deployment problem. For energy-intensive industries with hard-to-abate emissions (cement, lime, refining, steel, ammonia, ethylene), capturing CO₂ is part of any credible 2040 plan. The harder question is what to do with the captured CO₂ and how to size the capture step so that the economics survive contact with reality.
Capture: route choice drives everything downstream
Post-combustion amine capture remains the workhorse for dilute flue gases (3–15 vol% CO₂). It works, but the regeneration energy, typically 2.5–3.5 GJ per tonne of CO₂, sets the operating cost floor. On sites with concentrated streams (ammonia syngas, ethylene oxide, fermentation), physical absorption or even direct compression delivers materially lower cost per tonne. Oxy-fuel and calcium-loop routes look more attractive on greenfield cement and lime plants.
CCU vs CCS: the decision that's usually taken too late
CCS, geological storage, is a logistics and regulatory problem first, a chemistry problem second. It requires a CO₂ transport route (pipeline, ship) and access to a permanent storage site. Where that infrastructure exists or is reliably planned (North Sea, Norway, US Gulf), CCS today offers the lowest abatement cost per tonne for very large emitters.
CCU, utilisation, converts CO₂ into mineralised products, polymers, fuels or chemicals. The carbon balance depends on the lifetime of the product and the source of co-reactants (especially hydrogen). Utilisation is most credible when (i) the product locks carbon away durably, or (ii) it displaces a fossil-derived counterpart in a market that already has demand and willingness to pay.
What actually de-risks a CCU/CCS project
- Match capture technology to the flue gas you actually have, not the one in the brochure.
- Decide CCU vs CCS using a discounted cash-flow on the full chain, including transport and storage.
- Stress-test against electricity, hydrogen and CO₂ price scenarios before committing capex.
- Treat heat integration as a first-class design decision; capture is a steam consumer, not a bolt-on.
- Sequence permitting and offtake in parallel with engineering, both are usually on the critical path.
Where Ionect helps
We run independent, vendor-neutral capture-route screenings, build site-specific techno-economic models for the CCU/CCS decision, and review basis-of-design packages before FID. The objective is the same in every case: a defensible answer to the question "what should we actually build?"