MeDORA - Membrane-assisted Dissolved Oxygen Removal from Amine solution for CO₂ capture

Absorption-based post combustion carbon capture (PCCC) is currently the only technology operational at full-industrial scale, but reduction in OPEX and increased operational stability are required to accelerate its deployment. Oxidative degradation is responsible for about 70% of total amine losses, decreasing solvent lifetime while generating harmful by-products, corrosion and volatile emissions. Currently, technologies such as reclaiming, bleed and feed or complete replenishment of the solvent are used to mitigate the effects of degradation, however, this, contributes to higher OPEX in the process. The development of other solvent management strategies is therefore crucial to accelerate large scale implementation of CCS.

The Dissolved Oxygen Removal Apparatus (DORA) is a membrane-based technology capable of removing dissolved O₂ from an amine-based solvent, while stopping other components (e.g., amines and CO₂) from being stripped out through the membrane.

MeDORA aims at demonstrating stable long-term operations at HVC (Alkmaar (NL), Waste-to-Energy, up to 2 years) and RWE (Niederaussem (DE), power plant, up to 1.5 year). With 2 different solvents, 2 different industrial flue gases, and more than 20,000 hours of operation, the project is expected to bring DORA to a high Technology Readiness Level (TRL8) and prepare the technology for commercialization in 2026.

The main goals are:

• demonstrating 90% dissolved O₂ removal from amine absorbents, leading to up to 70% reduction in oxidative degradation, and, hence, OPEX of the plant associated with solvent management;
• achieving less than 10 ppm O₂ content in the CO₂ product.

MeDORA is a collaboration between SINTEF, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Aker Carbon Capture AS, RWE Power AG, TNO and N.V. HVC.

The project is funded within the ACT (Accelerating CCS Technologies) initiative, and it is financially supported by The Research Council of Norway (grant n. 340946), Projekttraeger Juelich (grant n. 03EE5160) and PPS-toeslag TKI-Energie (Ref: TKI 2023 MeDORA, program: Nieuw Gas/CCS).