Despite lingering concerns over methods, Norwegian oil company StatoilHydro has been given one of up to three needed greenlights to start carbon-capture and storage, or CCS, plant modifications for post-combustion processes at the Mongstad refinery in southern Norway.

The Petroleum Safety Authority has found nothing flawed in the oil company’s plans to build an on-site sour water stripper, sulphur facility and to begin key work on an amino-acid regeneration system.

Amino acid is the medium carbon-dioxide binds itself to before high-powered separation at different temperatures. Tests on this are ongoing at carbon capture and storage labs around the world.

For StatoilHydro, at least one more permission from the state Pollution Control Authority, the SFT, is needed before the site to test amino acids can be built, Scandoil.com understood Tuesday.

Meanwhile, some scientists still have doubts about the safety of amino processes, and they say releases into the atmosphere could have serious public health effects. At present, amino acids for a number of Norway-based carbon-scrubbing ideas is expected to be trucked in from Sweden, where animal husbandry creates excess amounts. It is understood, that the amino acids for at least Aker Clean Carbon Just Catch technology will be produced in Norway.

Of some three types of amino acid under study to help scrub carbon dioxide from industrial gases, monoethynol amino acid looks most likely to be adopted, judging by a report from Norway-based researchers at Bioforsk.

“No studies at present have found any effects concerning insects and birds,” the report says. Developers of carbon-removal techniques appear to be relying on the rapid degradation of amino acids in the environment if released.

To back them up, a study in the U.S.A. showed “low poisoning” in soil polluted with amino acids.

“Based on conservative estimates of micro-concentrations av monoethynol amino acid … after discharges from Just Catch, there is little to suggest that such discharges will help bring about negative effects in water and soil,” researcher Carl Einar Amundsen of Bioforsk Jord og Miljø in southern Norway concludes in a report posted online.

Still, Amundsen warned a better range of data was needed than from just one Just Catch leak study, “especially” on how sunlight affects the acids suspended in air and water.

Permission from the SFT could be forthcoming: A StatoilHydro report on the possible consequences of an amino leak or accident at Mongstad has been studied by the pollution regulator. Their remarks have been added to a debate among researchers, which, when over, could bring the second needed go-ahead at Mongstad.

“There is thus far a great deal of uncertainty connected to amino use, and efforts now are focused on optimizing the use of a few (acids), including certain amino mixes,” an pollution-control source told Scandoil.com.

The point of testing acids is also to cut the costs of carbon-separation, according to Aker Clean Carbon. The company has linked up with researchers at Norway’s SINTEF and NTNU to solve the cost riddle in a 300-million-kroner program called SOLVit.

“The aim is to come up with a process facility for CO2-capture that can operate on half the energy consumption of today’s processes,” Aker Clean Carbon chief exec Jan Roger Bjerkestrand has been quoted as saying.

Partner SINTEF has also announced a new 42-million lab for carbon-capture techniques at Trondheim, central Norway.

Apart from involvement at Mongstad, Aker Clean Carbon hopes to build a full-scale CO2 capture facility for gas-firing at Kårstø. So do two other companies: Anglo-American Fluor and Japanese Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan, and the jury is out on who’s front-end engineering will persevere.

An overall contract for building the Kårstø facility will be awarded in 2009.

Government OKs came this summer for post-combustion carbon-capture testing at Mongstad and Kårstø.

At Mongstad, power-plant and oil-refinery emissions testing will start in earnest in 2010, according to the plan.

ws@scandoil.com

Tags: Aker Clean Carbon, Aker Solutions, Fluor Corporation, Mitsubishi Corp., StatoilHydro