GCMD pilots breakthrough ship-to-ship transfer of onboard-captured CO2
Singapore-based Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation (GCMD) has spearheaded the first-ever ship-to-ship offloading of liquefied carbon dioxide captured onboard a vessel, conducted at Yangshan Port in Shanghai.
IMAGE: Ship-to-ship offloading of liquefied carbon dioxide captured onboard Evergreen’s container ship. Linkedin of GCMD
The pilot was executed by Shanghai Qiyao Environmental Technology (Qiyao), a China-based carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology firm.
In the trial, 25 mt of liquefied carbon dioxide (LCO2) was transferred from Evergreen’s container ship Ever Top, equipped with a full-process carbon capture system developed by Qiyao, to the Dejin gas carrier.
GCMD also led the second phase of the project, which focused on “operationalising the downstream carbon value chain—from offloading to transport and utilisation.”
The Dejin vessel then transported the captured CO2 to Zhoushan Port, where it was offloaded onto a truck and delivered to Greencore’s facility for use as a feedstock in low-carbon calcium carbonate production.
GCMD will also conduct lifecycle assessments to quantify greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction potential across the full supply chain, from capture to utilisation.
“It was encouraging to see the trial adopt the configuration identified in our earlier study as the most promising approach for offloading captured CO2 at scale,” Lynn Loo, chief executive of GCMD said in a social media post.
Last year, GCMD completed a nine-month feasibility study on offloading CO2 captured onboard ships in liquefied form.
It identified ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore transfers using an intermediate LCO2 receiving vessel as the most practical options for large-scale deployment, particularly where the captured CO2 is intended for storage or synthetic fuel production.
The study found that safety risks from offloading LCO2 remained below crew health thresholds but flagged underdeveloped global policy as a major barrier.
Key challenges include gaps in CO2 accounting and lack of cross-border transfer rules and market incentives to scale onboard carbon capture and storage (OCCS) technologies, it highlighted.
By Konica Bhatt
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