Aker Solutions, a Norwegian engineering company, will work with several prominent oil companies to develop new solutions for separating carbon dioxide from production streams at offshore fields. In a statement dated November 15, Aker Solutions named its partners as Equinor, Pertamina, Total, and the CO2 Capture Project (CCP) group formed by BP, Chevron, and Petrobras.
Offshore oil operators already have the ability to separate CO2 from the oil and gas productions streams and then re-inject it into their fields in order to improve recovery rates and boost efficiency, Aker Solutions noted. The process is not cost-effective, however, as the CO2 can only be separated after it is transferred to surface-level processing facilities.
As such, the partners will work together to develop CO2 separation facilities that can be installed at offshore drilling sites. They will focus on testing the membranes that do the job of separating CO2 from oil and gas, with the aim of determining what types of membranes are most capable of effecting the separation under subsea conditions in a cost-effective manner.
The tests will be carried out at the SINTEF research institute in Norway, Aker Solutions said. They will assess the performance of various membranes under different conditions of gas composition, flow rates, pressure, and temperature, it explained.