Shipowners and shipbuilders join forces to trap carbon dioxide

Copenhagen - A group of world leading shipping companies including NYK, Sovcomflot, Knutsen OAS and Ardmore, ship builders, including DSME and the mining company Vale, have teamed up with Denmark based Maritime Development Center to develop an on-board carbon capture and storage solution in a project named decarbonICE.

DecarbonICE is based on two new main ideas for the capture and storage part, respectively. The CO2 and other GHG’s in the ship exhaust are captured on board in a cryogenic process and turned into dry ice. Proven offshore technology is then applied during normal ship operations to transport the dry ice into the seafloor sediments. Here the CO2 will be safely and permanently stored as liquid CO2 and CO2 hydrate.

The decarbonICE concept is intended for ship newbuildings, but also for retrofitting on existing ships, thereby providing the opportunity to accelerate the transition towards the IMO target. In combination with future carbon neutral fuels like biofuels and electro fuels, the decarbonICE technology can create carbon negative shipping and thus contribute to atmospheric carbon reduction at a significantly lower cost than shore-based carbon capture.

“While we support a final goal of availability of zero carbon or carbon neutral fuels, we believe that a bridging carbon free solution is needed, which can utilize existing assets in terms of ships, propulsion systems and fuels. The decarbonICE project is intended to offer exactly that, and at a predicted low energy penalty well below 10%,” says the Chairman of the decarbonICE project, former DNVGL President and CEO Henrik O. Madsen.

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