MOSCOW (MRC) -- IFP Energies Nouvelles
(IFPEN) and Total announced they signed a strategic R&D partnership that
includes an agreement to endow a chair at the IFP School, on carbon capture,
utilization and storage (CCUS) and technologies to curb CO2 emissions, reported
Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The roughly EUR40 million partnership covers a period of five years.
The agreement has two parts: a strategic R&D partnership on
carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) aims to reduce the cost of
infrastructure and improve the CCUS chain’s energy efficiency to secure its
large-scale deployment. The partnership steps up the long-standing collaboration
between Total and IFPEN by marshaling additional resources. The research will
focus on fields related to new materials, process scale-up, underground carbon
storage in deep saline aquifers, technical and economic feasibility studies and
the quantification of environmental benefits for the entire CCUS
chain.
The Carbon Management and Negative CO2 Emissions Technologies to
Net-Zero Carbon Future Chair will help train a new generation of international
researchers and experts who will develop technologies to reduce carbon in the
atmosphere. Overseen by a scientific committee comprised of world-renowned,
independent experts, the chair will bring together seven doctoral and five
post-doctoral researchers for five years.
"We are delighted to
accelerate the R&D partnership between Total and IFPEN. We want to pool our
innovation capabilities to reduce the cost of CCUS technologies and improve
their efficiency - both of which are necessary for large-scale deployment.
Total wants to help make the planet carbon neutral and boost the competitiveness
of an industrial-scale CCUS sector," Patrick Pouyanne, Chairman and CEO of Total
said.
Didier Houssin, Chairman and CEO of IFPEN, commented: "IFPEN
has been actively researching carbon capture, utilization and storage
technologies for nearly 20 years. Our strengthened partnership with Total will
allow us to combine our teams’ skills and know-how with Total’s and thus to
accelerate the deployment of CCUS technologies, which are a key solution for
drastically cutting CO2 emissions."
According to the International Energy
Agency’s (IEA) Sustainable Development Scenario, which corresponds to a less
than 2°C rise in the global average temperature, it will be necessary to capture
and store 6 billion tons of carbon by 2050. This will require developing viable,
cost-competitive CCUS technologies.
As MRC wrote before, in
December 2017, Total inaugurated the new units at its Antwerp integrated
refining & petrochemicals platform, which had progressively started up in
the previous few months.
Total S.A. is a French multinational oil
and gas company and one of the six "Supermajor" oil companies in the world with
business in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Asia. The company's
petrochemical products cover two main groups: base chemicals and the consumer
polymers (polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene) that are derived from
them. |