Home District Energy News CO2 from the chimney will be used to grow tomatoes.

CO2 from the chimney will be used to grow tomatoes.

by Linda Bertelsen
Incineration, Plant, Amager,Slope,(amager,Bakke), In Copenhagen, Denmark

PRESS RELEASE | A new page is being written in Danish history as CO2 captured from ARC’s chimney is set to be used in the industry.

Today, ARC, together with Minister of Climate, Energy, and Utilities Lars Aagaard and Mayor of Copenhagen Sophie Hæstorp Andersen, inaugurates ARC’s demonstration facility for CO2 capture.

“Undoubtedly, we need to think new and differently to reach our climate goals. Here, CO2 capture from energy utilization of waste, which is used to grow tomatoes, is an example of how we can hit two birds with one stone through innovation.

I hope that with the experiences from this new demonstration facility, we can establish a full-scale facility that can capture CO2 equivalent to a year’s emissions from nearly 300,000 cars. The potential is incredibly significant for our climate efforts,” says Mayor Sophie Hæstorp Andersen (Social Democrats).

ARC’s Chairman, Marcus Vesterager, also emphasizes the potential of utilizing captured CO2: “We have shown that we can capture CO2 from our chimney. This is the next and crucial step, as we now demonstrate that it’s possible to utilize the captured CO2,” he says and continues: “With the demonstration facility, we are making history in Denmark, as CO2 is for the first time captured from the flue gas of a waste-to-energy plant, pressurized, cooled, turned into liquid, and then used at the Østervang nursery in Zealand.”

Recycled in the industry

The demonstration facility has been built by the company Pentair. “The CO2 capture facility at ARC is based on Pentair’s years of experience with CO2 capture and is the most advanced and proven technology on the market. The perspective for the demonstration facility is to clarify how a future tailor-made full-scale facility can be adapted to the operating conditions at ARC and the district heating network in the capital,” says Global Sales Leader Henrik Lyhne.

In connection with the construction of the demonstration facility, ARC has agreed with Linde Gas, which supplies industrial gases to large parts of the industry in Denmark and abroad.

The captured CO2 at Amager Bakke has food quality. It will be used explicitly for cultivating tomatoes, cucumbers, and similar crops at Østervang Zealand, one of the country’s major nurseries.

This demonstrates a coherent value chain for CO2 capture, contributing valuable new knowledge. It is an essential step towards ARC’s ultimate goal of capturing CO2 on a full scale, potentially contributing to a significant CO2 reduction of up to 500,000 tons per year.

FACTS

The partner consortium behind the demonstration facility consists of ARC, Pentair, Rambøll, and DTU, and all co-finance the CO2 capture facility. The consortium includes a significant point source at ARC, Pentair, which has developed and manufactured CO2 capture facilities for decades, Rambøll with extensive insights into waste-to-energy and CO2 capture, and DTU with some of the country’s leading researchers in CO2 capture.

The project receives co-financing of DKK 30 million from the Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Programme (EUDP). The demonstration facility can capture up to 4 tons of CO2 daily and is expected to be operational by summer 2024.

The process purifies CO2 to a quality that meets the purity requirements of the food industry and for future CO2 storage on land or, for example, in the North Sea. ARC’s long-term goal is to capture CO2 on a full scale and contribute to up to 500,000 tons of annual CO2 reductions. Learn more about CO2 capture at Amager Bakke here.