Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) – an Indian government-owned oil and gas company, announced intentions to apply carbon capture technology at its Gujarat oil refinery from the steam methane reforming based hydrogen generation unit.
The project could capture almost 700,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions annually which makes it India’s largest carbon capture utilization and storage initiative.
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The carbon capture solution will be provided by Dastur International and Dastur Energy which have joined forces to bring the project to life. The intention is to decarbonize Indian Oil Corporation Limited’s operations for the production of clean hydrogen.
The project is also supported by a United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) grant. The independent agency of the US government aims to advance economic development and US commercial interests in developing and middle-income countries.
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Part of the captured emissions are planned to be liquified and purified to 99.9% and sold to the food and beverage industry. The rest of the CO2 emissions will be used at the Oil and Natural Gas Commission’s (ONGC) Gandhar oilfields for enhanced oil recovery. Currently, a successful techno-economic feasibility study has been carried out.
“Dastur and its partners evaluated different CO2 sources and carbon capture technologies from multiple vendors to engineer a techno-economically feasible solution that we can implement within the constraints and challenges of a large and complex operating refinery. The novel use of advanced gas processing to provide an extremely competitive cost of carbon capture bodes well for the future success of the project,” said Shri SSV Ramakumar, Director of R&D and Board Member of IOCL.
Carbon capture technologies are considered a building block for enabling industry decarbonization at a large scale. However, many initiatives especially in developing countries still cannot bear the costs of storing the emissions permanently underground, which is the most effective approach in terms of reducing the carbon footprint.
Therefore, utilization like enhanced oil recovery and other industry use is providing a revenue stream for the project that is making it financially feasible at this point in time. Cost-cutting innovation is needed in permanent storage to be able to scale and reach global use quickly enough to achieve significant carbon removal.
