Carbon Capture & Storage Facility at Stanlow, UK

Kent has been awarded a pre-FEED engineering contract to develop the facility that will take the CO₂ emitted from one of Europe’s largest full-Residue Fluidised Catalytic Cracking units, located at the Stanlow refinery. The gas will be permanently sequestered into depleted gas fields under the sea in Liverpool Bay, as part of the HyNet cluster infrastructure in the North West of England.

The project supports Stanlow's position as the central pillar of the HyNet low-carbon energy project and Essar's UK decarbonisation strategy.

Kent's Pre-FEED scope includes:

• Preliminary Front End Engineering Design (Pre-FEED) package for the FCC CCS plant.
• Integration of the CCS plant into existing refinery systems (Process and Utilities).
• Transportation of the captured CO₂ to the site's Above Ground Installation (AGI) connecting to the off-plot CO₂ T&S system.
• Addressing additional pre-FEED activities identified during the 'Concept' study.
• A design fully compliant with Shell/ Essar DEPs and internationally industry-recognised engineering standards.

Kent's scope on this project also includes, Pressure Relief Study to mitigate concerns with the potential for overpressure within the CO boiler (COB) and upstream systems as well as, Electrification Study including converting the wet gas compressor turbine to a motor and installing a heat pump on the Propane/ Propylene Splitter.

Since 2019 Kent, as part of a consortium with Progressive Energy and Essar (now Vertex Hydrogen) and Johnson Matthey, has also delivered Pre-FEED, FEED, and additional work packages for a Low Carbon Hydrogen Plant (HPP1), also to be located on Essar's Stanlow Refinery, and part of the HyNet Northwest industrial cluster.

HyNet Northwest is being developed to provide low carbon hydrogen production, storage, transportation, and associated CO₂ Transmission & Storage (T&S) for the Ellesmere Port industrial area and beyond.

Essar Oil UK Limited (Essar) has committed to reducing carbon emissions from operations by 50% by 2030 and 100% by 2040. This will be achieved via energy efficiency, switching fuel to low carbon H2 and by implementing carbon capture to mitigate approximately 1 MTPA of CO₂ emissions from the refinery’s Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) Coke.

Once complete in 2027, the plant will eliminate an estimated 0.81 million tons of CO₂ per year – the equivalent of taking 400,000 cars off the road, eliminating nearly 40% of all Stanlow emissions