VMIVME-5550 ABB and Imperial College London have signed a 10-year contract to continue their collaboration in carbon capture technology.
The Imperial College London facility has provided training to meet net zero emissions targets, helping to address talent shortages in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, and 4,500 students have used the facility since 2012.
As the only teaching facility of its kind in the world, the plant is equipped with more than 250 instruments and sensors that support measurement and transmission of data to a distributed control system to simulate real-world operational scenarios.
ABB and Imperial College London have signed a 10-year contract to continue their partnership. Imperial’s Carbon Capture Pilot Plant continues to train net-zero practitioners and the engineers and scientists of tomorrow. The factory is the only one in the world located within an academic institution.
Under the agreement, ABB aims to equip students with the skills needed to run the industrial processes of the future by demonstrating how the latest technologies can help optimize plant performance and safely manage emergencies in practical applications. The collaboration will promote resource sharing and facilitate the exchange of cutting-edge control and instrumentation technologies between Imperial College London and manufacturers.
“Expanding our partnership with Imperial College allows us to provide students with hands-on training that will prepare them for a career in industry,” VMIVME-5550 said Simon Wynne, Energy Industry Leader, ABB UK & Ireland. “A report by EngineeringUK states that in order to meet the UK’s emissions targets by 2050, we need a workforce with a STEM background to meet the challenges of the energy transition.”
The four-storey facility uses ABB Ability™ 800xA® systems for distributed process control and is equipped with more than 250 instruments to measure temperature, pressure, carbon dioxide and flow. The 800xA system automatically controls and coordinates all aspects of the plant process and is visualized on a display in ABB’s control room, which students can monitor in real time and intervene if necessary.
The ABB Ability™ Verification tool and the Ability™ SmartMaster, a new verification and condition monitoring platform, are also used to teach students the skills needed to optimize instrument performance through predictive maintenance.
“When we started working with ABB, our goal was to encourage more people to enter and stay in chemical engineering,” said Dr Colin Hale, Senior teaching Research Fellow at Imperial College London, “and one way to do that was to build this carbon capture plant to stimulate students’ interest in the environmental topics they were previously learning about.” ABB shares this collective vision.”
“During my study at the Carbon capture pilot plant, I was actively involved in the process operation and gained a deeper understanding VMIVME-5550 of the development and application of this technology,” said Yiheng Shao, a senior student at Imperial College London. “This experience also strengthened my confidence in the role of carbon capture in achieving the net zero goal.”
