Global energy technology company Siemens Energy said last week its compressors will be used at Occidental Petroleum’s first large-scale direct air capture (DAC) plant in Ector County. The two compressor packages will enable the plant to capture up to 500,000 metric tons of CO2 per year when fully operational. Startup is expected in late 2024. The announcement was made March 6 during CERAWeek in Houston by Christian Bruch, president and CEO of Siemens, and Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Oxy.
Siemens Energy will supply a motor-driven 13,000 horsepower fully modular wet gas compressor package and a motor-driven 8,500 hp dry gas compressor for the DAC plant by Oxy subsidiary 1PointFive. The equipment will compress the captured CO2 for additional processing and pressurize the final product into a pipeline for injection into underground reservoirs. The 1PointFive plant is expected to provide practical solutions that hard-to-decarbonize industries can use to help achieve net zero. Construction began last year near Occidental’s Permian acreage.
Bruch said, “Technologies to effectively capture and sequester CO2 will be a necessity if we want to achieve our climate goals.” Hollub added, “Our first DAC plant will advance industrial-scale carbon capture to provide a solution to help Oxy and others accelerate their respective paths to net zero.”