ION Clean Energy Successfully Completes Six-month CO2 Capture Campaign Demonstrating >98% Capture Rate at Industry-Leading Energy Requirements on Post-Combustion Natural Gas

BOULDER, Colo., Oct. 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ION Clean Energy (ION) successfully completed a six-month testing campaign for its third-generation solvent technology, ICE-31, at the National Carbon Capture Center (NCCC) in Wilsonville, Alabama, which was developed in partnership with the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory and Southern Company. ION is the first technology developer to test post-combustion CO₂ capture from natural gas flue gas at the NCCC's Pilot Solvent Test Unit (PSTU) using the neutral test facility's newly configured natural gas-fired infrastructure. This work has been supported as part of its DOE-NETL project (DE-FE0031727).

ION and collaborators have previously conducted lab and small pilot studies with ICE–31 demonstrating its unique physical and chemical properties that result in low energy requirements and exceptional solvent stability for post combustion CO₂ capture. The ICE-31 campaign at NCCC operated for over 4,000 hours between March and September of this year that included parametric and long-term steady-state testing using multiple flue gases including natural gas combined-cycle (NGCC) surrogate flue gas (4% CO₂), real gas-fired boiler gas (8% CO₂), and real coal-fired flue gas (13% CO₂).

ION would like to spotlight the following key results from its successful ICE-31 campaign:

1.   95%+ CO₂ Capture for NGCC Flue Gas Conditions

• Continuous steady-state capture operation at the NCCC PSTU for more than 1,500 hours capturing 95%+ CO₂ using natural gas boiler flue gas at 4% CO₂ and 14% O₂
• CO₂ Capture efficiency of 98% demonstrated with only 2-3% more specific energy for 4% CO₂ flue gas (relative to 95% capture)
• ICE-31 demonstrated CO₂ capture ramp rates to 98%+ within minutes from warm start-up, indicating flexibility for dynamic operations necessary in load-following commercial environments

2.   Industry-Leading CO₂ Capture Energy Requirements

• Demonstrated specific energy of 3.0 GJ/tCO₂ on 4% CO₂ natural gas-fired flue gas at 95% capture, and 2.5 GJ/tCO₂ on 13% CO₂ for coal-fired flue gas at 91% CO₂ capture
• ProTreat^® modeling for typical U.S. facilities using ICE-31 at 95% CO₂ capture indicate specific energy of 2.6 GJ/tCO₂ for natural gas flue gas conditions and 2.4 GJ/tCO₂ for coal-fired flue gas conditions

3.   Stable and Environmentally Advantageous for Post Combustion CO₂ Capture

• The campaign demonstrated ICE-31's exceptional solvent stability and extremely low emissions

4.   ProTreat^® Predictive Modeling Validated with Empirical Results from ICE-31 CO₂ Capture Campaign at the NGCC

• ION utilized its proprietary module within the Optimized Gas Treating's software ProTreat^®, where parametric predicted specific energies have an average error of 1% when compared with the empirically measured results from the NCCC campaign

These results confirm and expand ION's expectations that ICE-31 is an exceptional solvent for natural gas and other flue gases having low CO₂ and high O₂ concentrations such as in NGCC facilities.

ION will continue to advance commercial readiness of ICE-31 at the new 10 tonnes-per-day pilot facility being constructed at Calpine's Los Medanos Energy Center in Pittsburg, California. This facility is specifically designed to optimize capture at an operating NGCC power plant and is expected to begin operations in late 2022.

"We are extremely pleased to have had the opportunity to demonstrate the exceptional qualities of ICE-31 at NCCC. We believe the results obtained here strongly support the advancement of ICE-31 for capturing carbon from point source emissions with low CO₂ concentrations" said Buz Brown, CEO. "Furthermore, the rigorous test campaigns that we've completed over the past seven years with ICE-21, and now with ICE-31, have allowed us to validate our solvent specific modules in ProTreat^® with an extremely high degree of accuracy. This underpins our confidence in translating the large pilot testing to commercial-scale application, with minimal process risks. With the additional work currently ongoing and planned in 2022, we are hopeful that ICE-31 will soon complement ICE-21 in ION's commercial portfolio for deployment in post-combustion flue gas applications."

About ION Clean Energy: ION was founded in 2008 with the focus of developing carbon dioxide (CO₂) capture technologies to reduce overall costs and make CO₂ capture a more viable option for greenhouse gas mitigation. The Company is commercializing proprietary solvent and process technologies that are more cost efficient than current commercial solutions for use by point sources of CO₂ emissions including natural gas and coal-fired power generators, and industrial emitters such as cement, petrochemical, steel, and mining operations. ION is currently working with domestic and global partners to deploy its carbon capture technology in commercial settings.

SOURCE ION Clean Energy, Inc.