Mitsubishi, NextDecade team up on CCS for Rio Grande LNG

NextDecade and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America have formed ties for a carbon capture technology for the Rio Grande LNG project in the Port of Brownsville, Texas.

The pair signed an engineering services agreement (ESA) for the design, license, and performance guarantee of KM CDR Process, which is a post-combustion carbon capture technology.

In March, U.S. LNG export project developer NextDecade launched its subsidiary NEXT Carbon Solutions to develop a large carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at the Rio Grande LNG. The project is expected to enable the capture and permanent geologic storage of more than five million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year.

KM CDR Process is owned by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering, a part of the MHI Group. The group has deployed 13 of these carbon capture systems around the world.

Matt Schatzman, NextDecade’s chairman and CEO, said: “We are pleased to have executed an ESA with MHI Group, a widely recognized leader in commercial-scale carbon capture technology. MHI Group’s carbon capture solution is an ideal complement to NextDecade’s proprietary processes. We look forward to working with MHI Group on the CCS project at Rio Grande LNG, which we expect to be the greenest LNG project in the world.”

Yoshihiro Shiraiwa, MHIA’s president and CEO, added: “This will be the world’s first application of post-combustion capture for LNG, and we expect this initiative will contribute to realizing carbon neutrality in the years ahead. MHI Group is committed to being an innovative solution provider as the energy industry transitions to lower-carbon options. We will work diligently with NextDecade to bring this project to fruition.”