The United Arab Emirates is now home to the Earth’s first commercial carbon capture operation on a steel production facility, the Global CCS Institute announced Monday.
The Al Reyadah project in Abu Dhabi is a joint venture of the Abu Dhabi National Coal. Co. (ADNOC) and Masdar, the emirate government’s clean technology and renewable energy branch, according to a press release. The project is expected to capture 800,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually from Emirates Steel operations; the material will be transferred to the Al Reyadah facility for compression and dehydration, and then moved through an underground pipeline to two ADNOC oil fields for use in enhanced oil recovery.
“CCS is the only technology capable of achieving deep cuts in emissions from necessary industrial processes such as iron and steel, cement, fertilizers, and natural gas processing so the opening of Al Reyadah is a major achievement in reducing emissions for this industry,” Global CCS Institute CEO Brad Page said in the release. “This is a key project in the Institute’s portfolio of large-scale CCS projects in operation or under construction which, by the end of 2017, is expected to have operational C02 capture capacity of approximately 40 million tonnes each year.”