A team of scientists at Jeddah-based King Abdullah University of Science and Technology is testing a technique for freezing greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants that is about half the cost of existing carbon capture techniques, Bloomberg and Arab News reported.
The cryogenic technology was developed by Sustainable Energy Solutions, a private company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, and may cost between $35 and $40 a ton on a large scale, said William Roberts, a professor at the university.
Within two years, the team hopes to capture up to 25 tons a day from a power plant near the new city of Neom, Roberts said. The project will cost around $25 million.
“We think the energy costs are low, the footprint is small and the capex is reasonably small,” he said. “Efficiency gets better as the scale goes up.”
Saudi Arabia is exploring a number of carbon capture, storage, and reuse technologies. Aramco is capturing 40 million standard cubic feet of CO2 a day at its Hawiyah Gas Plant, which it then pipes 85 km to the Uthmaniyah oil field to be injected into the reservoir for storage and enhanced oil recovery.
Aramco is also working on technology that captures carbon emissions from car exhausts and stores it until it can be offloaded at fuel stations.
