Atlas Copco: CO2 recovery and compression

To accelerate the reduction of CO2 emissions, scaling-up of the relevant technology through increased commercialisation is a necessity. As the Global Product Manager for High Pressure Gases & Services at Atlas Copco, Alfonso Peschiera has first-hand experience in supplying solutions to the CO2 market, specifically in the sector of compression.

Speaking at gasworld’s ‘Europe CO2 Summit 2020’ virtual event, Peschiera explained Atlas Copco’s commercial approach to CO2 recovery, revealing that the main drivers have always been financial and resulted in relatively self-contained installations. 

The company has more recently been taking a more coordinated approach through taxation, which makes new applications financially feasible. 

To give context, Peschiera divided the market into three steps for carbon capture: industrial, such as food & beverage, medium scale, such as flue gas, ammonia, and cement, and large-scale carbon capture and recovery, such as the oil & gas industry. 

Medium scale carbon capture 

The majority of the company’s involvement in carbon capture focuses on the medium-scale level in areas such as power generation, which captures CO2 from flue gas. 

“This kind of application is something we see coming up more and more. We’ve been working for the past few years in developing a more fine-tuned portfolio for this kind of application specifically because we see a great deal of value in the standardisation of equipment for specific applications when these applications show good potential for a modular approach.” 

With 8% of global CO2 emissions coming from the cement production industry, the company has also seen involvement in the cement industry. 

“We also work with many companies in the fertiliser world,” added Peschiera. “These plants produce a lot of CO2 and a lot of this CO2 is not always used.” 

“The right technology and solutions can bring value to the carbon recovery installer and operator by adapting to the project specific needs, be it pure CO2, flue gas, compression pressures, or CO2 purification.” 

“Compression is key to treat the gas before separation and, in many cases, after,” he added.