Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) began R&D activities for Carbon capture in 1990 and has developed a high efficiency chemical solvent process, the KM CDR Process^®, in collaboration with the Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. The process has been applied to eleven (11) worldwide commercial CO₂ capture plants which are providing captured CO₂ from natural gas-fired flue gas to enhance chemical production such as urea and methanol.

One of the most urgent challenges faced today, with the apparent advent of global warming, is the capture of CO2 from coal fired power plants, which is the largest single source of global CO2 emissions. MHI and Southern Company Services, Inc. have successfully completed a demonstration test program of a 500 tpd fully integrated CCS plant applied to a coal-fired power plant for the past 4 years. In addition, MHI has received an order for the world’s largest post-combustion CO2 capture plant of 4,776 tpd from an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) project mainly promoted by NRG Energy Inc. and JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corporation, which is now under construction.

(For a good Introduction to CCS, please see this post from our friends at Vista Projects.)