The pilot is being temporarily rolled out at the EfW company’s Rookery South Energy Recovery Facility (ERF) in Bedfordshire.
The plant was supplied by and will be managed in partnership with contractor Kanadevia Inova.
It will sample around 1% of flue gases from Rookery South ERF and produce data on process performance before releasing the CO2 back into the facility’s core system.
The installation intends to showcase the technology to key stakeholders and funders. Encyclis is currently undergoing a financing process to finalise investment in the full-scale facility.
The full-scale Protos ERF
Encyclis’s full-scale Protos ERF is currently under construction near Ellesmere Port in Cheshire, North West England.
Encyclis secured an environmental permit for the site at the end of last year.
It will process 500,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste annually and generate 49MW of electricity – enough to power 90,000 homes.
This ERF is a pathfinder project under Track-1 of the industrial decarbonisation scheme led by Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).
The findings from the prototype facility will confirm the final specifications for carbon capture at the Protos facility, but it is expected to lock away 370,000 tonnes per year of CO2 from the adjoining waste treatment plant.
As part of the HyNet North West cluster, the Protos plant’s captured CO2 will be transported via pipeline for sub-sea storage in depleted gas fields in Liverpool Bay.
‘Vital’ part of pilot project
Owen Michaelson, CEO of Encyclis, said: “As a company, we provide essential social infrastructure to deal with society’s waste and recover as much energy and reusable resource from that as possible, in line with the circular economy. With the unprecedented addition of commercial-scale carbon capture, we can not only cut carbon emissions from our operations but effectively remove CO2 from the atmosphere due to the non-fossil proportion of the waste we treat.
“What we are developing is an incredible opportunity to support the government’s key missions to deliver positive action against climate change, create new skilled jobs and strengthen the global reputation of the UK as a green industry leader.
“As we work towards fulfilling that ambition, we are taking steps to ensure we have a carbon capture process that delivers the best possible outcome in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The installation of this pilot plant at our Rookery South facility is a vital part of that process. It will enable us to measure the effectiveness of the technology and determine how to optimise its operation.”
