French global integrated energy company Total has joined the Valorisation Carbone Québec (VCQ) project as its first industrial partner, said carbon capture technology developer CO2 Solutions Inc.
Quebec City-based CO2 Solutions, a competitor in the Carbon XPRIZE challenge sponsored by U.S. utility NRG and Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA), launched the $15 million VCQ project last year.
The project was established to develop and demonstrate commercially viable end-to-end solutions to capture and utilize CO2 in various applications while at the same time reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It includes the participation of Université Laval and the Quebec government as founding partners.
"The strong interest shown by Total confirms the importance and pertinence of the VCQ project to address industry's desire to reduce their carbon footprint while creating economic opportunities through the full industrial carbon cycle,” Evan Price, president and chief executive officer of CO2Solutions, said in a statement.
“This is a further example of how the VCQ project, the world's most comprehensive and ambitious CO2 capture and utilization project, continues to draw strong and committed partners. We look forward to attracting additional industrial partners to the project in the near future."
The industrial partner category is one of five partnership types in VCQ along with the founding, supplier, utilization technology and end use. Industrial partners make financial contributions to the VCQ budget in exchange for project data. The amount of these contributions is undisclosed for competitive reasons.
To date, eleven different organizations have confirmed their participation as partners in one or the other categories of the VCQ project.
Suncor partnership founding partner
Joining the founding partners are Parachem, a limited partnership jointly owned by Suncor Energy Inc. (51 per cent) and Société Investissement Québec (49 per cent) and Hatch Ltd., a consulting and engineering firm specialized in the design and realization of major industrial engineering projects and services and the supplier of engineering services to the VCQ project.
The demonstration phase of the VCQ project includes the design, construction, installation and operation, at Parachem's industrial site in Montreal-East, of a CO2 capture unit using the corporation's enzymatic process, and CO2 utilization units provided by utilization partners.
The development phase aims to advance one or several second-generation CO2 utilization processes based on the work already initiated at various universities and public or private research centres.
