NUS Teams Scale Carbon Capture and Hydrogen Pilots Under S$65M Grant

Three National University of Singapore projects will scale carbon capture and hydrogen technologies to multi-tonne daily throughput, funded from a S$65 million award pool announced on 23 October 2026 at the inaugural Singapore Industry Decarbonisation Forum.

The Advanced Energy and Decarbonisation Office (AEDO) distributed the S$65 million across five projects; the NUS work takes three of them. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Energy, Trade and Industry (Trade), Gan Kim Yong, attended as guest of honour. The forum was organised by the Singapore Economic Development Board and AEDO.

All three NUS teams — led by Professor Zhao Dan, Associate Professor Sibudjing Kawi and Associate Professor Zhang Sui from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at NUS' College of Design and Engineering — previously delivered results under an earlier LCER programme. The scale-up grant funds the next step: larger systems, real flue gas, industrial hosts.

What does the scale-up money buy?

Each project pairs a capacity jump with an industrial trial site.

• Zhao Dan, carbon capture with porous materials. The earlier phase ran on real flue gas at the Waste-to-Energy Research Facility, capturing roughly 400 kilogrammes of CO2 per day at close to 100 per cent recovery. The scale-up phase targets five tonnes per day from higher-concentration flue gas, plus a separate two-tonne-per-day pilot at YTL PowerSeraya's natural gas combined-cycle power plant. The team will also study CO2 mineralisation for concrete applications, converting captured gas into minerals. Chevron is a partner, supplying industrial specifications, evaluation criteria and advice on scale-up feasibility.
• Sibudjing Kawi, hydrogen from methane pyrolysis. Phase 1 produced 500 litres of hydrogen per day in a catalytic membrane reactor operating at 500–600 degrees Celsius; a prototype was designed for one kilogramme of hydrogen and three kilogrammes of carbon nanotubes daily. Phase 2 targets 100 kilogrammes of hydrogen and 300 kilogrammes of carbon nanotubes per day through a pilot-scale reactor, demonstrated with Siemens and PacificLight Power at PacificLight's existing gas-fired plant using its natural gas infrastructure.
• Zhang Sui, hollow fibre membrane separation. The membranes let CO2 pass through more readily than nitrogen. Earlier work packed them into one-inch and four-inch modules; the smaller modules captured around four kilogrammes of CO2 per day at a waste-to-energy facility. The funded phase aims for a modular pilot system processing up to one tonne of flue gas per day, with durability testing against contaminants under real operating conditions.

Built versus announced

Everything reported here is announced capacity, not built. Zhao's five-tonne and two-tonne capture systems, Kawi's 100-kilogramme hydrogen reactor and Zhang's one-tonne-per-day membrane pilot all remain in development. The Phase 1 numbers — 400 kilogrammes of CO2 per day at near-total recovery, 500 litres of hydrogen per day, four kilogrammes captured by membrane modules — represent demonstrated performance.

The distinction matters for the material streams involved. Captured CO2 feeding concrete mineralisation would move recovered gas into a permanent mineral sink rather than short-cycle reuse. Methane pyrolysis yields solid carbon in nanotube form, a saleable co-product rather than a waste stream.

What decides what happens next

The trials answer one question: whether these technologies hold performance beyond the laboratory. Each project will measure durability, contaminant tolerance and integration with live industrial infrastructure — power plant flue gas, gas-fired generation assets, waste-to-energy exhaust.

Outcomes at YTL PowerSeraya and PacificLight Power will determine whether the capture and pyrolysis systems graduate from pilot to demonstration scale. The concrete mineralisation pathway and the carbon nanotube output will test whether captured carbon finds markets. The next milestone is pilot performance data under sustained industrial operation, which will set the deployment timetable AEDO and its industry partners work to.