Toray to construct all-carbon C02 separation membranes pilot facility
Japan’s Toray Industries says that it will install a pilot facility for its all-carbon carbon dioxide (CO2) separation membrane at its Shiga plant.
The new facility should become operational in April 2025. Toray will use it to establish mass production technology for CO2 separation membranes. The company will collaborate with biogas and natural gas production developers, related engineering manufacturers, and other external partners to validate the results, with a view to putting C02 separation membrane elements to practical use in the following fiscal year.
CO2 emissions from natural gas are relatively low when burned, so its use as a stable energy source should continue to grow.
In recent years, an emphasis on developing gas fields with low CO2 concentrations has heightened demand for more efficient C02 separation and recovery technology in view of a need to exploit gas fields with higher residual CO2 concentrations.
It will be vital to develop technologies that can efficiently separate and recover CO2 from biogas derived from biomass, which is a mixture of methane and CO2, and from waste gases containing nitrogen and C02, using these technologies for carbon capture and storage and carbon capture and utilisation.
Toray research laboratories confirmed the high separation performance and durability of its proprietary all-carbon CO2 separation membrane in gas environments containing impurities.
The company has refined its hollow fibre spinning and thin-layer coating technologies, establishing a film production process capable of producing consistently stable membranes. Simultaneously, it developed core technology for manufacturing membrane elements that bundle CO2 separation membranes. Using small membrane elements it created, the company successfully demonstrated CO2 separation from biogas and exhaust gas emissions at its Tokai Plant, maintaining consistent CO2 separation performance for a full week.
This demonstration confirmed the technology’s applicability for separating methane and nitrogen from CO2. Additionally, the biogas used at the Tokai Plant during the demonstration contained more than 1,000 parts per million of aromatic hydrocarbons alongside CO2, for a composition similar to that of natural gas. The technology should find wide-ranging applications, not only in biogas but also in natural gas production and in enhancing the efficiency of CO2 separation for CCS and CCU, where CO2 separation is essential.
In leveraging the new pilot facility to establish mass production technology, Toray looks to upscale prototypes and conduct demonstration tests working closely with biogas, natural gas production development companies, and diverse other partners to accelerate efforts towards practical application.
