Velocys joins UK CCUS partnership

Velocys on Feb. 3 announced it has joined Zero Carbon Humber, a carbon capture, utilization and sequestration (CCUS) hub under development in northern England. Participation in ZCH will enable the production of carbon-negative sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at Velocys’ proposed Altalto biorefinery.

The 20 MMgy Altalto facility will convert household and commercial waste into SAF and renewable naphtha. The facility is being developed in partnership with British Airways and the U.K. Department for Transport. Altalto Immingham Ltd., a subsidiary of Velocys, exercised an agreement to Rula Developments (Immingham) Ltd. in December 2021. RDIL owns the site of the proposed Altalto project neary Immingham in Northern England.

Velocys aims to reach financial close for the project and begin construction in 2024. Detailed engineering on the proposed plant is currently scheduled to begin next year, with commissioning expected to begin in 2026. Velocys expects the plant to be fully operational by 2027.

The U.K. government in October 2021 confirmed that two CCUS clusters were moving forward, including the Hynet and East Coast Clusters. The East Coast Cluster is made up of the Zero Carbon Humber and Net Zero Teesside projects. Together those industrial clusters made up 50 percent of the U.K.’s industrial emissions.

According to Velocys, the ZCH Partnership ill establish critical infrastructure to capture at least 17 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year and supply up to 10 gigawatts of hydrogen in industry and power projects across the Humber by the mid-2030s. The partnership currently includes Associated British Ports, British Steel, Centrica Storage Ltd, Drax Group, Equinor, INEOS Acetyls, Mitsubishi Power, National Grid Ventures, px Group, SSE Thermal, Saltend Cogeneration Co. Ltd., Uniper, the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, and Velocys.