AURORA Carbon Capture Project

To avoid increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases that raise the Earth’s average temperature and thus contribute to climate change, we need to find a way to prevent carbon dioxide emissions from CO2-intensive industries from escaping into the atmosphere. The rapid scale-up and deployment of more cost-effective and sustainable carbon capture solutions is one effective way. Solvent-based carbon capture is an important technology that can be readily adopted to many emission sources. Such technology can achieve high capture rates and deliver carbon dioxide at high purity with a relatively low energy demand. The AURORA project (funded by the European Union’s HORIZON EUROPE research and innovation programme) which started in January 2023, will make a significant contribution to the decarbonisation of industry by demonstrating and qualifying an advanced and innovative solvent-based carbon capture technology named CESAR1 for large-scale cost-efficient integration. Why CESAR1 solvent ? CESAR1 has good energy performance, low degradation rates, can achieve very high capture rates and is easier to use in flexible modes. Like most solvent technologies, CESAR1 has the advantage of being easily adaptable to almost any flue gas source. CESAR1 has undergone extensive pilot testing, and AURORA’s partners are convinced that the technology can be deployed commercially. However, the technology still needs to undergo full optimization and technological qualification for commercial deployment. AURORA aims to offer a complete, validated system (technological maturity level TRL8) that can be easily exploited by the stakeholders concerned. The technology will be demonstrated at TRL7-8 in at least three carbon-intensive industries: refining, cement, and materials recycling, as sectors where other alternatives towards climate neutrality do not exist yet.