A huge decarbonisation project involving one of northern Lincolnshire’s oldest industries has reached a critical point.
The multi-million pound pilot plant to demonstrate industrial scale clean lime production has been built, with the team behind it confident it will be operational before the end of the year. Tech specialist Origen, an Oxford University spin-out, is working with Singleton Birch at the Melton Ross quarry.
The initial phase is closing in on completion, with the team now looking at the second element - deploying a US-based specialist’s technology to use lime to draw CO2 out of the atmosphere.
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Ben Turner, chief executive at Origen, said: “The kiln is built and should be operational by the end of the year. We are going through commissioning, making sure everything works and then starting to switch on systems and work the plant. That’s expected to take the rest of the summer.
“It has been a difficult operating environment, the supply chain has been difficult, labour and the inflationary environment also, but nonetheless this is where we have got ourselves to.”
It is one of several carbon intensive industries looking to tap into the transformational Zero Carbon Humber proposal for the region.
“Long term the plan is to use the infrastructure being brought forward in the Humber to take CO2 offshore, but in the short term, the next three to five years, it is looking at various other routes,” he said.
First announced at The Waterline Summit in late 2020, the plans were first openly discussed with Business Live that December.
Updating on progress beyond the towering infrastructute, Mr Turner said: "We have closed out several rounds of funding, raised $20 million between equity fundraises and grants we have won. We have taken the team from eight to 15, and the intention is to go wider to 20-plus by the end of the year.
“Importantly for this, the commercial traction generated by becoming a part of the journey with Singleton Birch has been quite phenomenal.”
North Carolina-based 8 Rivers “a very capable organisation, working on various projects themselves” have developed a marquee air contactor technology called Calcite.
It accelerates the natural process of carbon mineralisation, capturing CO2.
Looking ahead, Mr Turner said: “It is a major collaboration. We can produce zero carbon lime, we use that zero carbon lime with the contactor technology to draw CO2 from the air, reform limestone, take it back to the kiln and go round and round in a loop.
“This is really pertinent for the Humber region, it could leverage a huge amount of the supply chain and expertise that resides here. I care passionately about the region, the North, and for me it is really exciting because a lot of technology is down south, in software and finance, whereas we are really making huge progress, up North, in traditional engineering, and bringing it into the future. This has the potential to be gigantic.
“I’d like to think in addition to all the other projects going on, this paints the Humber as a leading light in decarbonisation and CO2 removal.”
While many industries are focusing on capturing their own emissions, as the pilot plant does, the wider phase would work on what is already out there, “removing rather than abating”.
Mr Turner said: “Lime is a pretty vital industry, it is a material used in cement and steel manufacturing, purifying drinking water and refining sugar. All day-to-day commodities we use without thinking about it being impacted by lime.
“The problem has been with the manufacturing of lime, existing technologies emit around a tonne of CO2 for a tonne produced, and one tonne removes about 800kg of CO2.
“Origen allows lime creation at zero emissions. Then you can use it to remove CO2, and then we get to negative territory, and they are the two steps in the process.
“By collaborating we can move a lot faster. It is a problem we need to get on with solving.”
The challenge now is raising the capital. “We need to monetise CO2 removal,” Mr Turner said of the market mechanism required. “We have the funding to deliver the pilot plant to the point where we are moving to the next iteration of it. Given the need to scale the technology, it requires capital of between $50 million to $100 million, and that’s what we’ll be looking at in our next raise in Q1 to H1 2023. “That will allow us to build on a commercial scale, and there is potential in the UK and US to do that. It also allows us to push forward more rapidly and aggressively with the CO2 removal side of things.”
And it is coming too. Earlier this year, blue-chip tech giants Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, and McKinsey Sustainability launched Frontier , an advance market commitment to accelerate the development of carbon removal technologies.
“We are starting to see a strong demand for carbon removal,” Mr Turner said.
“We’re at quite a real inflection point with voluntary buyers of CO2 removal credits. We are going to need commercial markets, more government backing with regulation, but the voluntary market is embracing CO2 removal, and helping monetise CO2 removal credits.”
With the pilot plant scheduled to produce lime at zero CO2 by the end of 2022, engineering design work for the contact technology and an upgrade to the kiln is planned over the first half of 2023, with the build of the technology required at the “back end of 2023, aiming for operations in H1 2024”.
“We aim to be operating by mid-2025, and should have sufficient information from that project and associated projects to optimise the technology and scale up,” Mr Turner said, grateful for the support and enthusiasm in the Humber.
“We have had a huge amount of engagement with the local supply chain - it is quite phenomenal. With the exception of a couple of bespoke items, all the civil and structural engineering and the design and build work has been done by local contractors; there is a real buzz about the supply chain, about what this could turn into. I like that buzz - when you get people bought into a project they make it happen.”
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