The importance of testing and how you can save time, costs, and headaches in the carbon capture process
Having a unique opportunity to test a carbon capture process in a variety of industrial environments, and to verify new design features and solvents during long-term, onsite tests, has proven to be an important step on the way to successfully designing full-scale carbon capture plants. Being able to qualify the capture process for your industry and flue gas can save you both money and time.

Carbon capture and flue gases
Carbon capture for various industries is fundamentally similar, however, depending on the flue gas source, the technology and solvents used, operation and results may differ. Simulations can give good indications of expected performance, but nothing matches the certainty gained from actual testing under real industrial conditions where weather, operating variations, and actual flue gas are reflected in the results. Hence, knowing what you’re up against by ensuring the technology you’re using to capture the carbon is tuned for the job, is key.

This is the purpose of a test campaign. To design and conduct tests to ensure technology fits for a specific industry with certain types of flue gases and to find optimum operational conditions. A variety of tests can be performed during a campaign. They are designed to identify any challenges, investigate if you can operate within acceptable conditions, and verify the performance of the capture process, all with a full-scale carbon capture process in mind. Once a campaign has been run and a new flue gas has been verified by the technology, the results are transferrable, giving future projects a head start from the get-go.

Over the last two decades, the SLB Capturi team has built up extensive experience running test campaigns. This has brought operational experience and knowledge, which has optimized its product line of carbon capture technology for industrial-scale operations for verified flue gases.

The Mobile Test Unit
SLB Capturi uses its Mobile Test Units (MTUs) to run test campaigns for new industries at actual industrial sites. Introduced back in 2008, the MTUs are fully functional, small-scale carbon capture plants designed for flexible and efficient testing on real flue gas sources. As indicated by the name, the MTUs are container-based making them fully mobile, transportable by road and fast setup at any site. They are designed and constructed by SLB Capturi and utilizes SLB Capturi’s Advanced Carbon Capture™ technology, ensuring that results from test campaigns are scalable.

With the MTUs, SLB Capturi has obtained more than 35,000 hours of operating experience across Europe, and most recently, North America. They have been applied across various industries with the purpose of being able to scale for that specific industry once verified. As of today, the carbon capture technology has been tested and qualified for flue gases from cement kilns, waste-to-energy plants, gas-fired and coal-fired power plants, hydrogen production (SMR), char production, smelters, lime calcination, and pulp and paper.

The MTUs replicate all essential processes found in large-scale capture plants, with test results that can be directly scaled up to commercial applications. This scalability reduces risk for customers by providing accurate data on specific flue gases at their site ensuring future carbon capture projects are stable and more seamless from FEED to completion and operation. “The MTU has proven to be a valuable asset for competence development, process modifications and optimization, as well as risk mitigation.” (Source Paper: Towards full-scale carbon capture – Results from the Mobile Test Unit in various industry sectors) 

The significant number of hours of tests have also given SLB Capturi an industry leading health, safety, and environment (HSE) performance for emissions management. During test campaigns the focus is on ensuring high process flexibility and solvent stability, and optimal plant operations and pre-treatment methods depending on the various conditions of the flue gas. 

Trusting the process
A recent example of a successful test campaign comes from North America. Together with CO280 Solutions Inc., a leading developer of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects, SLB Capturi has completed a field pilot in the pulp and paper industry. The pilot focused on validating the SLB Capturi’s liquid amine technology to capture biogenic CO2 from recovery boiler stack emissions at a pulp and paper mill on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The MTU was installed at the mill site in Q3 of 2024, where it operated for more than 4,000 hours, achieving a consistent capture rate efficiency of 95%. During the test program, the MTU met all key performance indicators including capture rate efficiency, energy consumption, solvent durability, and absorber emissions (read the full press release here).

The test campaign with CO280 for the pulp and paper industry is a great example of how results and data become transferrable to an industry once the technology has been verified - making a full-scale carbon capture plant a graspable reality for the pulp and paper industry. 

The ability to bring a pilot plant fully representative of a proprietary large-scale carbon capture plant provides a completely different type of risk reduction in the planning phase, as the mid- and large-scale market for carbon capture do not see standard monoethanolamine (MEA) based solutions as an option. The use of an MTU ensures technology and solvents are tuned for best possible project execution and operation, while de-risking and potentially creating time and cost savings for an industrial-scale carbon capture plant.