Veolia to supply CO₂ purification units for Protos capture plant

Veolia has won a contract to design and supply two carbon dioxide purification and dehydration units for the Protos carbon capture project near Ellesmere Port — equipment that will condition roughly 370,000 tonnes of captured CO₂ a year for pipeline transport and permanent storage.

The award came from Kanadevia Inova, the engineering, procurement and construction contractor on the development. No contract value was disclosed. The units will be installed at Encyclis's Protos Energy Recovery Facility in Cheshire.

What does the equipment actually do?

The purification and dehydration units strip impurities and moisture from the captured CO₂ stream so the gas meets the specification required for pipeline transport and permanent geological storage. That's a non-negotiable step: wet or contaminated CO₂ won't pass muster for injection into a storage network, so the units sit squarely between capture and disposal.

Veolia said the modular design of the units lets them fit within the limited space available at the site — a real constraint when you're bolting capture infrastructure onto an existing energy-from-waste plant rather than building on a greenfield site.

The numbers behind the project

The underlying facility is built to process up to 500,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste annually and generate as much as 49.9MW of electricity. The carbon capture plant is expected to collect about 370,000 tonnes of CO₂ a year — a figure the developers compare with the annual emissions of roughly 200,000 petrol cars.

Encyclis and Kanadevia Inova describe Protos as the UK's first full-scale carbon capture plant integrated with an energy-from-waste facility. The UK government has called it one of the world's first projects of its kind.

Once purified, the captured gas is expected to enter the HyNet North West pipeline network before being stored in depleted gas reservoirs beneath Liverpool Bay.

How the biogenic fraction changes the carbon maths

Encyclis says about half of the captured carbon will come from biogenic material in the waste stream. On that basis, the company expects the project to deliver net carbon removals — provided the CO₂ is captured and permanently stored as planned. That's the key caveat, and it's one practitioners will recognise: net removal status depends entirely on the storage chain performing end to end.

For waste-sector operators, the significance is straightforward. Energy-from-waste has faced mounting scrutiny over stack emissions, and retrofitting capture at full scale converts a contested residual-waste treatment route into a potential negative-emissions asset. Protos is the first test of that proposition at commercial scale in the UK.

Veolia's positioning

Anne Le Guennec, chief executive of Veolia's water technology activities, framed the win in strategic terms.

"This pioneering project establishes Veolia at the forefront of industrial decarbonisation and environmental security," she said.

"We are delivering on our promise to drive ecological transformation by enabling industries to transition towards net zero, in line with our GreenUp strategic programme," Le Guennec added.

The contract pulls Veolia's water and process treatment arm into the carbon capture value chain — purification and dehydration being close cousins of the industrial water treatment the division already sells. Expect the company to pursue similar packages as more capture projects reach FID.

What happens next

The timeline splits in two. The energy recovery facility itself is currently being commissioned, so waste throughput and power generation start first. The adjoining carbon capture plant is scheduled to begin operating in mid-2029 — the milestone that will determine whether the 370,000-tonne annual capture figure and the net-removals claim hold up in practice, and whether Protos becomes the template for retrofits across the UK EfW fleet.