Ingersoll Rand and Aqualung team up on scalable carbon capture

The two companies have signed a Head of Agreement (HoA) contract underlining their commitment to harvesting more sustainable energy resources and will soon launch the first commercial prototype of their jointly created carbon capture system.

The prototype brings together Ingersoll Rand’s blower and vacuum solutions with Aqualung’s membrane technology, aiming to create a safe, absorbent-free, and highly compact carbon capture system for industrial gas and biogas.

Due to high costs, carbon capture has largely been left to large-scale operations in heavy industries so far. The partnership aims to address this inequality and make viable carbon capture available to far more industry actors, including medium- or smaller-scale operations.

Aqualung’s patented membrane technology is the culmination of more than 20 years of research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and with no toxic additives it does not require a dedicated site redesign for installation.

The company said its carbon capture solutions are energy- and space-efficient and can be retrofitted to multiple adjacent facilities at once, resulting in potential to drive down cost.

Blowers and vacuum pumps are required to provide driving force in the membrane system. This led Aqualung to approach Ingersoll Rand, which has a broad multi-technology and equipment portfolio in this space. Ingersoll Rand also mapped out high-level application solutions and advised Aqualung on how to optimise equipment to meet changing specifications over time.

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Nearly fifty percent of Aqualung’s carbon capture unit costs are attributed to machinery, highlighting the importance of a suitable supply chain partner.

“Aqualung required an end-to-end solution, which could also be customised and scaled to meet the needs of businesses of any size,” said Kristof Suykerbuyk, sustainable energy markets manager EMEA, Ingersoll Rand.

“Our vast portfolio of products, ongoing implementation support, and tailored configuration tools enable a flexible approach in which Aqualung customers can start capturing carbon straight away at a scale that meets their current needs, while visualising the appropriate equipment to do so at a greater scale in future.”

Following numerous pilot tests across the globe, the first commercial unit is set to launch imminently in Arkansas, USA. The technology will capture CO2 off a natural gas boiler, and overtime, deliver the CO2 to its partner Standard Lithium, to create a lithium carbonate for the electric vehicle (EV) battery market.

Ingersoll Rand and Aqualung’s modular solutions can be constructed off-site and are designed to be relatively quick to deploy, the companies confirmed. They also offer different scalability solutions, allowing customers to grow their carbon capture on demand.

Projects can be established at medium scale until an efficient process is established, then grown to a much larger scale; or smaller units can be implemented separately and then connected with a common infrastructure, resulting in one big unit to improve efficiency.

Andrew Robbins, CEO of Aqualung, said: “We’re very excited Ingersoll Rand is more than a supplier, demonstrating the foresight to be a driving force towards cleaner technology by accelerating our offering beyond expectations. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for both companies.”