lomarlabs teams up with Seabound on maritime decarbonisation

lomarlabs works with entrepreneurs bringing deep tech solutions to the maritime industry, aiming to help them de-risk their technologies and optimise their business models. The venture is spearheaded by former Lomar technical director Stylianos Papageorgiou, who has been appointed its managing director.

Seabound has developed a patent-pending compact carbon capture device that can be retrofitted into a ship’s engine exhaust at the funnel. The CO2 chemically reacts with pebbles of quicklime, which then convert into limestone, keeping the CO2 locked in. The limestone pebbles are temporarily stored onboard before the ship returns to port, without any need for energy-intensive CO2 separation, compression, or liquefaction.

According to Seabound, the limestone pebbles are safe, inert and non-toxic; and abundantly available. Once back in port, the limestone pebbles are offloaded and either sold in pure form or turned back into quicklime and CO2, for the quicklime to be reused onboard another vessel and the CO2 sold for utilisation or sequestration.

Preparations to install this equipment onboard the first ship will take place in May and June this year to run the first-ever pilot project throughout this summer.

The project is part of the Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition Round 3 (CMDC3), which was announced in September 2022, funded by the UK Department for Transport and delivered in partnership with Innovate UK.

“lomarlabs is advising on engineering and design for this transformative solution, adapting it to the realities of everyday commercial shipping operations,” said Stylianos.

“We help formulate pilot tests on Lomar vessels, and fine-tune the business model using our industry insight to help make a viable business. We share our experience and network to develop solutions that have the potential of delivering systematic change for our maritime industry.”

Seabound co-founder and CEO, Alisha Fredriksson, added: “It has already been instrumental working with Stylianos and his team because they’re keen to jump into the technical details with us and to brainstorm creative approaches to iteratively and cost-effectively de-risk this novel technology.

“Together we aim to demonstrate that the shipping industry doesn’t have to wait to decarbonise in 5-10+ years, but that there are already viable solutions coming to the market now."