“Welcome to the 3rd site”

In 2021, TCM established a cutting-edge testing facility for emerging technologies. Known as the «Site for Emerging Technologies», often referred to as «the 3^rd site». This facility is dedicated to testing innovative technologies, including membranes or absorbents. Which are solid materials designed to capture CO₂. These emerging technologies are in the early stages of development, presenting exciting opportunities for technology advancement.

Five campaigns

TDA Research was the inaugural user of TCM’s modular testing site for new capture technologies. Followed by another American company, Membrane Technology and Research (MTR).

During the spring of this year, TCM concurrently hosted two significant test campaigns at this site: MOF4AIR and ACCSESS. The MOF4AIR project is funded through the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. While ACCSESS is part of the EU’s commitment to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. In the autumn, an American InnoSepra is conducting tests on their innovative technology at the same location.

Ahmad Wakaa serves as TCM’s coordinator for test activities at the Site for Emerging Technologies.And he plays a crucial role in reporting back to clients about the outcomes of these tests.

«How would you, from your perspective, summarize TCM’s experiences with three completed and two ongoing test campaign at the Site for Emerging Technologies?»

“The completed and ongoing test campaigns on the Site for Emerging Technologies have been the first pages in an exciting new chapter for TCM. We have tested various types of technologies. Including membranes, sorbents, non-amine-based solvents and rotating packed beds already. And we see interest from other technology types for future testing also. The test results and operating experience from these test campaigns offer great learnings to technology developers (such as TDA, MTR and Innosepra), European research projects (MOF4AIR and ACCSESS), TCM and it’s owner companies. Testing at the Site for Emerging Technologies will be a valuable step in bringing these new technologies to market. To enable the level of emissions reduction needed for the world to reach its climate goal. We need as many tools in the toolbox as possible!”

«In what way are clients who intend to use this facility received and guided by TCM to achieve the best possible testing results?»

“This can vary depending on the project, but typically TCM’s involvement begins early with a technology assessment procedure we call our Work Process. Which was the topic of TCM’s recent webinar. We assess the maturity of the technology and help the developers to close any gaps before testing at TCM. The test modules at the Site for Emerging Technologies are often built especially for the test campaign at TCM. And we have provided technical, HSE, operational and quality testing input for the technology developers to consider in their design.

Once the systems arrive at TCM, our Modifications team lead the construction and interconnection work and ensure this work is done safely. After that, TCM’s operating experience is often crucial in aiding commissioning. And initial troubleshooting of the units. This is especially true for instrumentation and analysers. Which generate the valuable test data. The test campaigns themselves are typically operated by the vendor. But operational support from TCM is always available. However, TCM was the operator for the ACCSESS pilot and currently for MOF4AIR. The Technology team at TCM, in which I work, help to coordinate, and optimize the test campaign and to analyze the results.”

«Can you, with a clear conscience, say that everyone who so far has tested at the facility has received «value for money», in that the testing results have laid foundation for the effective scaling of their respective technologies?»

“The technology types which have tested on the Site for Emerging Technologies thus far. Have generally been less mature than the conventional amine-based carbon capture systems. However, part of TCM’s strategy is to target “modular” technologies on this site. This means that we look for technologies in which the scale-up strategy is to duplicate a standard design to increase capacity. This scale-up strategy means that testing, de-risking and demonstrating a single module at TCM. Can enable rapid maturation of the modular technology towards the market at a lower cost than large demonstration scale pilot testing like that typically required for amine technologies.”

«The collaboration between a customer and TCM’s expertise involves gaining insights into the nature of various technologies, which often may be proprietary. How does TCM ensure the considerations for confidentiality are upheld?»

“TCM has extensive experience with handling proprietary technology testing. Even with multiple technologies testing simultaneously and we leverage this experience on the Site for Emerging Technologies. Data from parallel tests are stored on different servers with strict access control. We also extensively use anonymized chemical names to protect proprietary information. While ensuring that substances are still safely handled according to their classification.”

«After the completed campaigns, have you gained experiences and insights that will be relevant for improving the organization and management of future test campaigns at the Site for Emerging Technologies?»

“As previously mentioned, the Site for Emerging Technologies is a new chapter and a new way of working for TCM. It has been a successful chapter so far, but we have learned a lot along the way that could bring improvements in the future tests. This covers a whole range of topics – too many to list in this article! – but one would be how to best equip test modules to deal with the cold Norwegian winters. We complete this “Lessons Learned” process after every campaign in a structured manner, with involvement from all departments of TCM.”