Lessons from the ROAD project for future deployment of CCS

The ROAD project was designed to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of a large-scale, integrated CCS-chain deployed on power generation. Post-combustion technology was to be applied to separate CO₂ from the flue gases of the new 1069 MWe coal-fired Maasvlakte Power Plant 3 (MPP3) in the harbour area of Rotterdam. From the capture unit, the CO₂ was to be compressed and transported through a pipeline, originally to the P18-A platform in the North Sea to inject CO₂ in the P18-4 gas reservoir. An alternative storage site, the nearshore Q16-Maas, was selected in 2015. Feasibility and FEED studies were performed in the period from 2010 to 2017, when the industrial partners pulled out of the project because of lack of political and financial support for the ROAD project. Capture, transport and storage technology is available and will work; remaining questions can be answered by engineering solutions. The full-scale capture plant can be designed and procured to the standard required to enable FID. Pilot plants have proved very valuable for testing and improving the ROAD capture plant design. In all cases, safe and practical designs to transport and store the CO₂ were developed.