BrevikCCS by night

Merry Christmas 2023 from Brevik CCS

Here follows a short status update from the world's first CO2 capture plant in the cement industry as 2023 draws to a close and a well-deserved Christmas holiday is just around the corner. 

At the previous update before summer, I had to announce disappointing extent of visible changes on the construction site as the large equipment was still being prefabricated at other locations. Now, it is with pleasure that we can announce the exact opposite, as you can hardly recognize our cement plant compared to what the situation was before the summer. 

During the autumn, we had three major campaigns involving the lifting of large components. The first of these was the installation of the absorber, which is a towering installation 50 meters high and weighing 230 tons. This was installed during the last week of August with a giant crawler crane with a capacity of 650 tons, in joint lifting with a 500 ton mobile crane. The process itself was a spectacular sight for us and many other spectators who followed along the outside of the fence. The stack for the absorber was also lifted in a few days later which added another 50 meters to the top and which now towers 100 meters above the ground, and the red airplane light on the top has become a new landmark. The absorber is the heart of the capture system and is the unit where the CO2 from the flue gas is captured. 

With the absorber and stack in place, the large crane was dismantled, moved, and rigged up again in Grenland Havn's area for lifting the six storage tanks for CO2. Each of these also weighs just over 200 tons and is approx. 24 meters high. The assembly of these went completely according to plan and they are now visible from the seaside. Early October, the large crawler crane was once again rigged up in the factory area to lift in two pipe modules and a large stair tower. 

Grenland Havn is now in the process of finalizing the construction work related to the establishment of a loading facility for liquid CO2 for the ships that will transport this to Øygarden for permanent storage 2,600 meters below the seabed. The new quay is now practically complete and the pipes from the tanks to the quay have been laid underground and pressure tested. The loading arm and associated equipment will be installed on the new quay shortly after the New Year. 

The next big heavy lifting campaign will be in March. Then three large modules will be installed, which are now located at Trosvik for completion with pipes, valves, insulation, instrumentation and cabling. In addition, the desorber must be in place as well as a large bridge over the process area, which must be lifted in two sections. 

After this, an enormous number of pipes and cables will be assembled, which will knit everything together into a complete process plant, which will be mechanically completed towards the end of 2024. 

The 15 process operators who will operate the plant 24/7 in 5 shifts are now employed, onboarded, and well underway with a very extensive training over approximately 12 months until in the autumn, when we will gradually start testing the plant, system by system. 

And we can still happily report very good results on everything to do with health, the working environment, the external environment and safety. At the end of November, approximately 550,000 working hours had been worked on the construction site without serious incidents. So far, the project has had 1 injury with absence where a person slipped on the ice and sprained his foot in January this year. Currently, the number of workers on the construction site is slightly over 250 and it goes without saying that it is a formidable task to ensure that each individual at all times has the working environment and safety fully taken care of as far as possible. 

2023 has been a demanding but incredibly exciting year for us who work with the Brevik CCS project, a year which in that sense will probably only be beaten by 2024. There is no doubt that the challenges will be many in the future as well, but we have an organization and a workforce that is now highly trained in finding good solutions to small and large obstacles that constantly arise. We look forward to the continuation and sense an ever-increasing expectation of full capacity utilization for CO2 capture during 2025. 

Tor Gautestad

Project Manager Brevik CCS

Heidelberg Materials Norge AS Setrevegen 2
3950 Brevik
Norge