Tata Chemicals Europe opens UK’s first industrial scale carbon capture and usage plant

The £20m plant is expected to capture 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, which will reduce TCE’s carbon emissions by over 10 per cent.

In what is claimed to be a world-first, carbon dioxide captured from energy generation emissions will be purified to food and pharmaceutical grade and used as a raw material in the manufacture of sodium bicarbonate (Ecokarb). According to TCE, this process is patented in the UK with further patents pending globally.

The carbon capture plant, supported with a £4.2m grant through the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s Energy Innovation Programme, will see TCE make net zero sodium bicarbonate and one of the lowest carbon footprint sodium carbonate products in the world.

In a statement, Martin Ashcroft, managing director of TCE , said: “The completion of the carbon capture and utilisation demonstration plant enables us to reduce our carbon emissions, whilst securing our supply of high purity carbon dioxide, a critical raw material, helping us to grow the export of our pharmaceutical grade products across the world.