NEW YORK & AUSTIN, Texas & NEW DELHI–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ridgewood, NJ based Dastur International, Inc., along with its affiliate companies Dastur Energy Inc. and M. N. Dastur & Co (P) Ltd. (Dastur), has been awarded a US Department of Energy (US DOE) funded study for the design and engineering of a carbon capture project for a large integrated steel producer in North America. The project is designed to enable the production of low-carbon emissions steel through CO2 capture of up to 2 mtpa from the available blast furnace gases. This is the first industrial-scale carbon capture project for the steel sector in North America. Dastur is the Prime Recipient of the Award and will be supported by Boulder, CO based ION Clean Energy, Inc. and Austin, TX based University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences.
Addressing a major share of carbon emissions in the integrated steelmaking process, the project aims to design an industrial scale and cost-effective solution for the capture and disposition of CO2 and provide a hydrogen-rich gas stream for meeting the energy needs of the host steel plant. Dastur’s proposed approach and design targets to bring down the cost of capture and disposition to mid $40/tonne of CO2, a significant improvement over incumbent solutions in the 60-100 $/tonne range.
The Biden Administration, in its “2030 Greenhouse Gas Pollution Reduction Target”, has announced that “The United States can address carbon pollution from industrial processes by supporting carbon capture as well as new sources of hydrogen – produced from renewable energy, nuclear energy, or waste – to power industrial facilities.” Acting Assistant Secretary and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) Dr Jennifer Wilcox at the US DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy said, “We are pleased to support this project for industrial-scale and cost-effective carbon capture from blast furnace gases at a large integrated steel plant in the US. We hope that this approach can provide a viable pathway for the decarbonization of an important sector of the US economy.”
“This is the first and a very important carbon capture project at an integrated steel plant in the United States. With the Department of Energy’s support and with Dastur’s expertise in the design of commercial-scale engineering systems for carbon capture, this project can provide a competitive path for decarbonization of the US steel industry,” said Peter Marcus, Founder and Managing Partner at World Steel Dynamics, a leading strategic advisor in the steel sector.
Atanu Mukherjee, President and Chief Executive Officer of Dastur, said, “As a leader in industrial decarbonization and designs for industrial plants to minimize the “carbon premium”, Dastur is pleased to receive this award from the US Department of Energy. This is in quick succession of Dastur’s recent wins for designing commercial-scale carbon capture solutions in the oil and gas, refining and petrochemical industries. As a beachhead project, it has the potential to demonstrate US leadership and innovation in decarbonizing integrated steel plants around the world. I believe it can also serve as a reference design for clients in the heavy manufacturing and industrial sector looking for effective decarbonization strategies.”
Along with its partners, Dastur will draw upon its intellectual property & know-how in gas conditioning, system design & engineering, steel sector expertise, carbon capture technology & storage and sequestration expertise to engineer a flexible, scalable and cost-effective industrial-scale carbon capture & management solution. A successful & cost-effective industrial-scale solution could serve as a reference for other integrated steel plants in the USA, as well as the major steel-producing geographies like China, Japan, South Korea, and India, where steel capacities are largely blast furnace based.