Project overview
Project title: Mineral Optimization driving Renewable Energy applications in Low Energy CO2 Capture and Utilization in Copper Processing
Project code: CETP-FP-2023-00394
Financial support: Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research, CNCS/CCCDI – UEFISCDI
Period: 2025 – 2028
More4LessCu proposes a solution to achieve a near-zero CO2 emission copper smelting plant, with added benefits of increase in productivity, reducing variability in process due to degrading copper ore quality, improve energy efficiency and producing fuels via CO2 capture and utilization. The proposed solution can be integrated with existing and future copper smelting plants. The More4LessCu approach is different than the general CO2 capture and utilization (CCU) philosophy, where the captured CO2 and green hydrogen are first used within the Cu smelting process before being utilized to produce alternate fuels. The More4LessCu concept includes seamless integration of the copper smelting process with pre-treatment of the copper ore concentrate with green hydrogen, CO2 capture process, CO2 utilization to treat the H2S gas stream resulting from concentrate pre-treatment step, and finally the fuel production step.
Figure 1 shows the simple schematic of the proposed concept vs the general CCU concept. The proposed solution is of high relevance for energy transition, as copper plays a crucial role in transition towards a more sustainable and renewable energy future. We aim to achieve TRL 5 (process for industry relevant conditions) in this project.
