In Denmark, the NG Group company Recycling & Waste is taking a significant step towards making its waste treatment process climate-neutral by 2030. After investing in double-digit EUR millions and spending several years of work, the company is now ready to trial and test a pilot carbon dioxide capture unit at its hazardous waste-to-energy plant in Nyborg in the first half of 2025.
The perspective for what is said to be the world’s first-of-its-kind pilot project is to build a full-scale carbon capture plant that can capture approximately 145,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the thermal treatment of the approximately 180,000 tonnes of hazardous industrial waste that the company converts into district heating and electricity annually.
The energy from the plant accounts for approximately 80 percent of the district heating demand for the citizens of Nyborg.
By realizing its carbon capture ambition, the company will also contribute to a reduction of approximately 38 percent of Nyborg Municipality’s total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030.
Head of Waste Management Services Denmark at Recycling & Waste, Jens Peter Rasmussen, is pleased that the company is now ready to gather concrete and vital knowledge about how effectively it can capture CO2.
The pilot project will show the direction and qualify the decision-making basis for our ambition to minimize the climate impact of the final treatment of industrial hazardous waste, Jens Peter Rasmussen said.
Amine carbon capture technology
The novel pilot project will capture CO2 from two of the three rotary kiln lines at the Nyborg hazardous waste-to-energy plant.
This will be done using amine technology in a test unit for CO2 capture that the supplier SLB Capturi has been developing for almost 20 years.
It will now demonstrate its potential at the Nyborg plant for hazardous waste, where the waste composition varies greatly compared to conventional incinerators.
The project will provide the technical basis for applying for funding from the Danish government’s CCS pool to finance a possible further project with carbon capture and storage.
Aligned with owner ambitions
In December 2024, Nordic investment firm Summa Equity acquired Recycling & Waste from Fortum for EUR 800 million through its Norwegian portfolio company NG Group, intending to become a Nordic leader in the circular economy.
The integration process between the Nordic companies is ongoing, and the companies will be united under the name NG Nordic in April 2025.
We want to help our customers reduce CO2 emissions, reach their recycling targets, protect nature, and stay competitive. The climate ambition for the high-temperature plant in Nyborg is an important step forward for our group, where the majority of sales are in line with the EU taxonomy, emphasizing our strong commitment to sustainability, said Bjørn Arve Ofstad, CEO of NG Group.
Part of the Carbon2x concept
The Danish project is part of Recycling & Waste’s Carbon2x concept. It has not yet been decided how the captured CO2 will be used, but it is most likely that the captured CO2 will be stored underground for the first few years.
This depends partly on the knowledge that Recycling & Waste gathers from the pilot project and a more detailed analysis of the future framework and market conditions.
Recycling & Waste’s Carbon2x concept has the long-term goal of recycling the carbon from the CO2 generated in the incineration processes the company operates, to return it to the material cycle, for example, in the form of high-quality plastic.
The company has demonstrated this in another pioneering project at the Riihimäki waste-to-energy plant in Finland.
