Seabound, a British start-up developing onboard carbon capture technology, has completed its first full-scale carbon capture units at its research and development facility in Doncaster. After land-based testing using a large diesel generator, the modular systems are due to be installed on the UBC Cork, a 5,700 GT cement carrier chartered to Heidelberg Materials and owned by Hartmann Group.
Seabound’s approach is built around container-sized capture units, each roughly the size of a 20-foot shipping container, designed to trap CO2 from a vessel’s exhaust stream. The company says the system can also remove sulphur emissions, offering an additional compliance benefit as air pollution rules tighten.
At a company event this week, attended by more than 70 representatives from shipping, industry, investors and local government, the company highlighted new partnerships intended to support scale-up. One is a €1.5mn award from the European Space Agency’s Business Applications and Space Solutions programme.
Nil Angli, the agency’s Space Solutions Maritime Lead, said: ‘The maritime industry relies on space-based data and satellite communications every day. We are proud to partner with early-stage companies as they move from innovation to commercialisation, and Seabound is a model of what our Business Applications and Space Solutions programme is designed to support.’
Seabound also announced a partnership with thyssenkrupp Polysius focused on producing so-called green lime, a key input to the capture process, which the company argues could support a more scalable and net-positive approach.
For cargo owners, onboard capture could provide a route to emissions reductions that has been difficult to access through fuel switching alone, particularly for hard-to-abate segments such as dry bulk, tankers and other deep-sea shipping trade.
Lars Erik Marcussen, Project Manager, Logistics at Heidelberg Materials Northern Europe, commented: ‘Seabound offers Heidelberg Materials a route to Scope 3 emissions reductions that was previously unattainable for us. We now have a practical pathway to cutting our emissions in transport, and can move closer to delivering our net-zero concrete product.’
Seabound’s CEO Alisha Fredriksson described the completion of the first full-scale units as a turning point after several years of development and early demonstrations with shipping groups including Lomar, Hapag-Lloyd and Wallenius Wilhelmsen.
‘This moment represents years of engineering, testing, and collaboration finally coming together,’ Fredriksson said. ‘These systems will be the first of many over the years to come as we scale to even broader impact.’
The company has raised more than £8.5mn in equity and grant funding and has been supported by two rounds of the UK Government’s Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition, which helped establish its Doncaster hub. Seabound’s longer-term ambition is to capture 100mn tonnes of CO2 a year by 2040, equivalent to roughly a tenth of global shipping emissions.
