SK E&S, Honeywell UOP to capture carbon from LNG plants

SK E&S Co., a clean energy unit of South Korea’s No. 2 conglomerate SK Group, and Honeywell UOP, a US major refining and petrochemical technology company, are set to capture carbon from liquefied natural gas (LNG) power plants, the first private project for such eco-friendly business in the Asian country.

SK E&S said on Tuesday it recently agreed with Honeywell UOP to jointly develop a demonstration facility for carbon capture. The two companies plan to launch a front-end engineering design (FEED) for the facility while discussing measures to commercialize carbon capture technology to be developed together.

“The project is the first case for a private sector to build its own facility to demonstrate carbon capture from a natural gas power plant,” SK E&S said in a statement.

The move came as SK E&S is seeking to reduce carbon from its power plant business. The company is working to produce low-carbon LNG with its own carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology from the Barossa gas field in Australia.

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For the LNG power plant carbon capture project, SK E&S is set to offer one of its power plant sites for the facility, secure government permissions and work on engineering, procurement and construction. The company is currently operating three natural gas power plants in South Korea.

Honeywell UOP, which has about 4,900 patents in the energy, petroleum and chemical sectors, will provide its Advanced Solvent Carbon Capture (ASCC) technology designed to capture carbon dioxide from post-combustion flue gases while developing technology and improving process efficiency, according to SK E&S.

The ASCC technology is expected to dramatically reduce carbon from the global power plant sector as it captures more than 95% of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel exhaust, SK E&S said.

“The cooperation is predicted to significantly help SK E&S complete a green portfolio,” said SK E&S Vice President Cha TaeByoung, who leads the company’s net zero technology center. “We will contribute to carbon reduction in the power generation sector by commercializing carbon capture from natural gas power plants.”

Write to Mi-Sun Kang at misunny@hankyung.com
 

Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.