A major European energy company is set to invest approximately $34m in a Norwegian research project designed to identify the optimum technologies and processes for extracting carbon emissions from the gas streams of different types of power stations.

The announcement, which is expected early next month, will see the unnamed energy firm join the $59m SOLVit project alongside research body SINTEF, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and engineering firm Aker Clean Carbon.

Under the programme, which includes the building of a new laboratory in Trondheim featuring industrial scale test facilities, researchers will seek to develop optimised methods for capturing carbon from flue gas streams that increase the proportion of CO2 extracted while cutting costs and energy use.

Tore Killingerland, communications manager for Aker Clean Carbon, said that improving carbon extraction systems represented the biggest technical challenge facing carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects. "We've been pumping and storing CO2 underground in Norway for more than 10 years, but it is capturing the CO2 that is the costly part of the process and the area where there is still some way to go technically," he said.

Carbon capture systems typically rely on chemicals called amines which are pumped into the flue gas stream using what Killingerland describes as "a giant shower installed within a 30 foot tower". The amines then connect with the CO2 and sink to the bottom of the tower where they are pumped out and heated to disconnect the CO2 and amine molecules. The captured CO2 can then be pressurised and turned into liquid so that it can be stored underground, while the amines can be reused in the tower to capture more CO2.

However, Killingerland said that this process still needs to be optimised for different fuel types. "You need different chemicals depending on the type of fuel you are burning and you need to change the process and the technology," he said. "The flue gas from natural gas, for example, contains around six per cent CO2, while that from coal can be 12 per cent, so you need a different approach. "

He added that the initial two-year phase of the project would aim to optimise the process and amines for various fuels, while the following phases would investigate new chemical solutions and approaches designed to reduce costs and energy use.