CO2 reduction

Aker Kværner, SINTEF, and NTNU are working together to develop new chemicals that could help reduce CO2 emissions from power plants.

As part of the agreement between the three, SINTEF, the largest independent research organisation in Scandinavia, and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), will jointly develop and test the chemicals which scrub CO2 from flue gases.

Today, a few international companies are already supplying equipment to capture CO2 from coal- and gas-fired power stations. But these are are based on “scrubbing” CO2 out of the stations’ flue gases using water-soluble chemicals called amines.

SINTEF and NTNU plan to develop alternatives to the amines currently in use in the course of their work together. These, they hope, will be more efficient, more stable and less damaging to nature.

The two institutions will form a jointly owned company that will own the rights to the new chemicals once they've been developed, which they then plan to sell on to Aker Kværner, as well as to other companies.