Mast Carbon Technology, a specialist developer of synthetic activated carbons, has been selected as a finalist at the recent South Region Shell Springboard Awards
The inaugural Shell Springboard Awards is a scheme aimed to encourage entrepreneurs to present an innovative and commercially viable business plan to reduce greenhouse gases.
Mast Carbon Technology's entry focuses on its new activated carbon material which adsorbs significant CO2 emissions.
This material will be used to create a highly efficient, compact and ultra lightweight CO2 recovery system for remote offshore oil and gas platform installations.
The system works by recovering CO2 from produced gas, thereby reducing the CO2 emissions created when the gas is either used domestically, for power generation or by power generation and flaring in the UK's upstream oil and gas industry.
Mast Carbon Technology's Professor Steve Tennison is behind the project which has evolved from the company's research into new polymer based carbon materials and a system designed for solvent recovery.
The novel monolithic system is similar in concept to the catalytic converters found in modern cars, but instead of using ceramics and metals, it employs the highly absorbent properties of activated carbon to trap CO2 emissions at source.
Once recovered, the emissions can be stored in a specialist structure or re-injected back into old gas or oilfields on the seabed, thereby preventing CO2 from reaching the atmosphere.
"In the future, Mast Carbon's monolithic adsorbent has applications beyond the absorption of CO2 emissions, for example in the filtering of blood and also the adsorption of solvents and other volatile chemicals released from industrial processes" says Steve Tennison, managing director of Mast Carbon Technology.
"We have already received academic support from Bath University who have published a study affirming the environmental credentials of our technology." Mast Carbon Technology specialises in the development of controlled pore structure (micro-meso-macro) and physical form synthetic activated carbons tailored for use in adsorption, biomedical, catalytic, electrochemical and many other applications.
Physical forms range from beads to complex monoliths.
These are currently available in kilogram quantities for product and process development.
Larger quantities will soon be available through Mast's Plymouth based production facility, Mast Carbon Advanced Products, along with other activated carbon products (carbon beads and carbon cloth).
