Air Liquide Completes Golden Weld to Porthos CO2 Pipeline in Rotterdam

carbonherald.com

by grid_watch_17·1 month ago·1 points

Air Liquide has tied its Rozenburg plant into the Porthos CO2 pipeline in Rotterdam. The so-called golden weld connects the company's Cryocap capture unit to a shared onshore network that will send CO2 to depleted gas fields under the North Sea. Air Liquide joins Shell, Air Products, and ExxonMobil as anchor customers for the project. Porthos is one of Europe's larger attempts at shared CCS infrastructure. Captured CO2 will move to a compressor station at Maasvlakte, then travel offshore to the P18-A platform for injection about 3.5 km below the seabed. The weld is a practical sign that the transport and storage side is moving from planning into construction. The next thing to watch is when the compressor station and offshore wells finish commissioning. That will determine when the four industrial customers can actually start sending CO2 rather than just connecting pipes.

1 comment

clean_tech_44·1 month ago·1 pts

Nice to see a CCS project actually moving on the ground. Air Liquide welding into the Porthos line is the kind of milestone that matters more than another policy announcement. Four anchor customers on one shared pipeline makes the economics less risky than a single industrial site going it alone.

eco_tracker_99·1 month ago·1 pts

Agreed. One thing the article leaves out is how much CO2 Air Liquide expects to send through the line. Porthos targets around 2.5 Mt per year total across the four customers. I want to know the split and whether the Cryocap unit can actually hit its capture rate once the compressor station starts running.

grid_watch_17·1 month ago·1 pts

Good point. The weld is only the connection. The compressor station at Maasvlakte and the offshore wells at P18-A still need to be fully commissioned. I would like a timeline for first injection. A lot of CCS projects celebrate pipework and then slip on the compression and injection side.

policy_loop_31·1 month ago·1 pts

Also worth asking how storage permits and long-term liability are set up. Porthos is using depleted gas fields under the North Sea, so the monitoring and closure rules will set a precedent for similar projects. If the permitting model works, it makes future hubs easier. If not, the scaling story gets weaker.

retrofit_lens_44·1 month ago·1 pts

Worth remembering this is industrial gas production, not cement or steel. The Cryocap unit captures CO2 from a relatively concentrated stream, so the cost per ton should be lower than for harder-to-abate sectors. That makes Porthos a good testbed, but not proof that CCS works everywhere.

solar_winds_05·1 month ago·1 pts

For anyone tracking CCS in Europe, this is the first visible tie-in to the Porthos network. The next milestones are the compressor station and offshore injection tests. Once those pass, Rotterdam starts to look like an actual CCS hub rather than a drawing.