Deep Decarbonisation of a Sugar Refinery – Feasibility, Engineering and Wider Replicability of This Technology

The project will undertake a Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) Study on a process to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% from the Thames Refinery site based in Silvertown, London and operated by Tate & Lyle Sugars (TLS) .

The Thames Refinery is home to the largest sugar refinery in Europe, with a capacity of 1.2 million tonnes per year, and sugar has been refined at the site since 1878\. Thames Refinery uses boilers fired with natural gas to generate steam and power for the refining operations. These boilers emit carbon dioxide in their flue gases.

TLS is seeking to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2050 and this project has the potential to make a major contribution to achieving that goal. The hope is that the technology being assessed in this study can be deployed at the Thames Refinery site and also at other sugar refineries around the world. Furthermore, the technology can be deployed to significantly reduce the emissions from a range of other emitters such as the cement, steel and power generation industries, and it can also be used to remove CO2 that is already in the air.

The project will be undertaken by a consortium led by TLS and two other partners, Origen Power and Cranfield University. Origen Power is developing a technology that can remove carbon dioxide from fossil fuelled boiler flue gases and also from ambient air, while Cranfield University will be contributing their expertise in calcium looping, the approach that is being applied in this project.The project will undertake a Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) Study on a process to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% from the Thames Refinery site based in Silvertown, London and operated by Tate & Lyle Sugars (TLS) .