Review of Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) and Possibilities of Introducing a Small-Scale Unit

Sammanfattning: With the ever-increasing level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, there is an enormous need to find new ways to minimize CO2 emissions. One way to tackle this problem is with Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). BECCS is a new technology, which captures CO2 from biomass and stores it geologically. As biomass is considered to be CO2-neutral, this technology creates negative emissions and could thus in the long run decrease the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. There is currently a large unawareness of BECCS as a mitigation technology, preventing the break through as it does not receive enough attention and most importantly enough funding or promotion by incentives. By introducing small-scale showcase units to policy makers and the industry, BECCS as a technology with its many benefits can be successfully demonstrated. During this project, an extensive literature review has been done in order to evaluate the current status of the technology and to investigate the maturity and possibilities in the field to introduce small-scale units. Injection sites worldwide have been contacted, to research the possibilities of external small-scale projects to inject CO2. These sites are strictly regulated and it is therefore difficult to inject as an external partner. Industry and field experts were also contacted regarding the different technologies and their scalability. The various capture technologies have potential to work in small scale. As most technologies, the capture technologies used in BECCS processes are first developed in micro-scale in laboratories. This means that the technologies are known to work in small scale, the problem being that they are not commercially available and therefore questions regarding reliability and economy remain to be solved.