Kent awards pre-FEED engineering contract for carbon capture plant at Essar’s Stanlow Refinery

Kent, a leading engineering company in oil and gas, carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS), and hydrogen (H2) have been awarded a Pre-FEED Study by Essar Oil UK for the Stanlow Refinery.

As part of the new contract win, Kent will incorporate a CO2 Capture and Storage Plant (CCS) to capture CO2 from the Fluid Catalytic Cracker (FCC) flue gas at Essar’s Stanlow Refinery in the North West of England, the UK’s first low carbon refinery.

The project supports Stanlow’s position as the central pillar of the HyNet low-carbon energy project and Essar’s UK decarbonisation strategy.

Since 2019 Kent, as part of a consortium with Progressive Energy and Essar (now Vertex Hydrogen) and Johnson Matthey, has also delivered Pre-FEED, FEED, and additional work packages for a Low Carbon Hydrogen Plant (HPP1), also to be located on Essar’s Stanlow Refinery, and part of the HyNet Northwest industrial cluster.

HyNet Northwest is being developed to provide low carbon hydrogen production, storage, transportation, and associated CO2 Transmission & Storage (T&S) for the Ellesmere Port industrial area and beyond.

Matt Wills, Market Director, Low Carbon Onshore Projects at Kent, said, “We are delighted to be a part of this milestone project. We have an excellent relationship with Essar, and we feel honoured to continue supporting them in their aim to reduce energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to help meet global climate targets. Also, contract wins like these demonstrate our capability of full energy transition scopes, i.e., hydrogen, carbon capture, and decarbonisation.”

Essar Oil UK Limited has committed to reducing carbon emissions from operations by 75% by 2030 and becoming net zero by 2040. This will be achieved via energy efficiency, switching fuel to low carbon H2, and implementing carbon capture to mitigate approximately 1 MTPA of CO2 emissions from the refinery’s Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) Coke.