Perth company Cool Energy is looking to apply its ground-breaking technology to strip prohibitive greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from natural gas streams, to a number of onshore gas fields in Australia and other parts of the world.
Perth company Cool Energy is looking to apply its ground-breaking technology to strip prohibitive greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from natural gas streams, to a number of onshore gas fields in Australia and other parts of the world.
The evaluations are running as the company increases the momentum towards bringing its technology to commercial fruition by the end of the year.
Cool Energy managing director Jessie Inman told WA Business News the company was in the midst of feasibility studies on a number of CO2 stricken gas projects and expected to begin a commercial project by the end of the year.
“It would be nice for that project to be in Australia, given the technology was developed in WA,” Ms Inman said.
Cool Energy would be seeking equity in the upcoming project, she said.
The company is well positioned to move quickly to construction, given its $4 million backing from the giant Royal Dutch Shell Group, the world’s biggest gas producer and 17 per cent shareholder, via Shell Global Solutions International.
Ms Inman confirmed that a public float was a future capital raising option, as previously reported by WA Business News, but would only be considered after Cool Energy had a proven commercial operation up and running.
The company also has a development grant from the federal government of nearly $2 million.
“The success of the tests for the gas dehydration plant and the CryoCell will determine the optimum conditions the company will seek for its first commercial plant,” Ms Inman said.
Cool Energy has begun field trials on the new gas processing plant, incorporating two gas treatment technologies, at ARC Energy’s Xyris gas plant near Dongara north of Perth in the Perth Basin.
The Woodside/Cool Energy plant is capable of processing two million standard cubic feet a day of natural gas with a CO2 content of up to 14 per cent.
Arc’s Xyris gasfield, about 360 kilometres north of Perth, first delivered gas into the Parmelia pipeline for South West customers in November 2004.
A key component of the gas treatment is Cool Energy’s low cost CryoCell technology, which removes CO2 from natural gas streams by freezing it, then removing it as a liquid for sequestration.
The technology eliminates the need for traditional dedicated solvent processes and their supporting utilities, and thus allows operators substantially lower capital and operating costs.
The technology has the potential to unlock hundreds of gas fields around the world, currently not developed because of their high carbon dioxide levels.
The processing plant is also testing Woodside’s new gas dehydration technology, designed to remove water from natural gas streams, crucial to the CyroCell technology.
Both technologies were developed at WA’s Curtin University of Technology.
Besides Shell, Cool Energy’s gas processing development partners include 25 per cent shareholders Nido Petroleum Ltd, ARC Energy Ltd, Centre for Energy and Greenhouse Technologies Pty Ltd, Curtin University of Technology, Process Group and Woodside Energy Ltd.
