Masdar is in talks with Statoil about conducting pilot tests in Abu Dhabi on the Norwegian oil company's experimental compact carbon-capture technology.
The so-called 3C technology has been put on Masdar's shortlist of most promising initiatives in the fields of clean energy and emissions reduction to emerge from this week's World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, said Sam Nader, a senior executive in the Government's flagship alternative-energy company.
Mr Nader, the director of Masdar's carbon division, visited Statoil's exhibition booth yesterday to view a working model of the technology and gain a better understanding of how it could potentially capture carbon dioxide from industrial flue gases at a fraction of the cost of the standard process.
"There would be much less heat required, and therefore a big energy saving," Neri Askland, the Statoil representative for Abu Dhabi and the GCC, told Mr Nader during a demonstration. Savings on construction materials and land would also be substantial.
The novel carbon-capture process replaces a large concrete cooling tower used in the standard process.
It includes a high-pressure spraying system for carbon dioxide-absorbing liquids. The system can be mounted inside the exhaust vents already built into most industrial plants.
A small pressurised heating chamber is then used to separate the waste gas from the carrier liquid, allowing the carbon dioxide to be sent for storage or commercial use and the carrier liquid to be recycled. This replaces the much larger heating and separating units currently in use at carbon-capture projects around the world.
Last week, Statoil was awarded three international patents for the new industrial process developed by a team led by Torbjorn Fiveland, a principal researcher at the oil company.
Prototype equipment is undergoing tests at a Statoil research facility in Porsgrunn, Norway.