Heavy industrial sectors like cement, steel and chemical manufacturing account for between 14%and 25% of worldwide industrial CO2 emissions — and face pressure to decarbonize and meet net-zero goals. Current manufacturing processes in heavy industry are underserved by existing decarbonization technology options. Carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technologies will play an important role in enabling industry to meet sustainability goals, and separation (the carbon capture part) counts for more than half the overall cost of CCUS today. Reducing the cost of gas separation is therefore crucial to reduce the cost of CCUS and make it economically feasible at scale. That’s where Ardent comes in.
Ardent Process Technologies, formerly known as Compact Membrane Systems, pioneers advanced membrane technologies to accelerate decarbonization and transform the global industrial and energy landscape. In other words, “we make membrane solutions for industrial gas separation, specifically targeting carbon capture from industries producing the building blocks of our economy like cement, steel, bricks, lime, paper, petrochemicals,” says Anya Lamb, Ardent’s CMO.
Membranes are selectively permeable materials that allow certain things to pass through them while keeping others out. “In this case, we pull carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, out of non-polluting nitrogen streams so we can store, utilize or reprocess the carbon so it isn’t released into our atmosphere,” she explains. “Diving in more deeply, our solutions use a type of membrane where the chemistry of the membrane itself helps pull target molecules across the membrane, making the gas separation more energy-efficient and cost-effective.” Researchers have long recognized the promise of this membrane technology for gas separations, and “our system design harnesses their potential by making them stable, operable and [ready to perform] for industrial-scale separations.”
Ardent’s technology “holds the key to unlock cost-effective and energy-efficient point-source carbon capture across heavy industry,” Lamb says. “It addresses the cost-efficiency and scalability issues of incumbent solutions, delivering a proven, scalable, energy-efficient and cost-effective solution that can decarbonize heavy industry at the gigaton scale.” Existing technology is capital-intensive and often limited to large plants with chemical plants on site, but the modular and bolt-on nature of Ardent’s solution “makes it easy to integrate into existing facilities, and the scalability makes it well-suited for plants of all sizes across a wide range of industries,” she says. Ardent is currently in the process of piloting its carbon capture technology in the field. “We recently delivered the first of three pilot rigs that will be commissioned this year to demonstrate our carbon capture technology with leaders in the petrochemical, steel and kiln industries,” she says.
The company is partnering with global leaders like Chevron and engineering company Technip to deliver end-to-end solutions at commercial scale.
“Ardent has grown up as a Delaware company,” says Erica Nemser, Ardent’s CEO, who also chairs the Delaware Sustainable Chemistry Alliance’s Board. “We love the resources and opportunity Delaware has to offer, from excellent scientific and technical talent to the commitment to manufacturing advanced technology to address climate emissions.”
The regional universities (especially the University of Delaware’s world-class chemical engineers), proximity to international transportation and economic support from the state “are all huge factors in our decisions to invest and grow in the state,” she adds. “It’s not hard to recruit employees to Delaware once they visit and we’re also a reasonable commute from Maryland, New Jersey and Philadelphia, with a lot of technical talent.”
