Managing director Jessie Inman said companies of all sizes from the hydrocarbon and engineering sectors have been enquiring about the technology since Cool Energy first introduced it online a few years back as an environment-friendly alternative to removing carbon dioxide from natural gas streams.

The CO2 is removed as a liquid, which can be readily used for geosequestration or miscible flood enhanced oil recovery and is more cost-effective than conventional amine or membrane-based technologies.

“These companies know we are in demonstration phase now and they know that the results from these trials will determine how quickly we can move Cryocell into the commercial arena,” she said.

“They are very interested to see how we are progressing the technology and to get an idea as to when they might be able to access it.

“If we get the positive results that we are hoping for, we may well have a host of companies lining up to use it.”

The Cryocell trials will involve a range of process conditions, maximising the amount of data gathered to determine optimum operating parameters and configuration for commercial use.

They will also provide live data to analyse all aspects of the technology, including those that may need further research and development.

Inman said the beauty of Cryocell was its environment-friendly approach.

“There are no solvents or chemicals in our process and the CO2 comes off as a liquid, which drastically reduces the costs of geosequestration compared to amine processes,” she said.

“It will also have lower operating costs than using membranes because membrane replacement can be quite costly and frequent. Our process does not have any major parts so there is an economic attraction as well.

“If the trials are successful, we will be looking to take a working interest in smaller fields and scale it up from there.

“That approach will provide a steady income for Cool Energy and will ensure our ongoing involvement with the technology.

“We will not allow this to go out there unless it is completely secure in terms of its proper implementation and having a working interest is the only way to ensure that.

“We cannot risk a failure because somebody may not completely understand how to build the technology properly.”

The technology behind the three-phased Cryocell has been a long time coming in an industry that still uses two-phase processes.

“The thermodynamics are new,” she said.

“It is a three-phased behaviour process – vapour, liquid, solid – compared to most gas processing today. It has taken us a really long time to understand the technology and we are still learning.

“Taking new technologies from the laboratory to the field – moving away from an educational environment to a commercial one – is a risky step.

“Finding the risk capital can be difficult and managing the project requires a lot of skill because of the many different stakeholders involved.

“That said, we would not have come this far unless we were encouraged by the commercial potential.

“But commerciality will not mean the end of our development of Cryocell. We believe we will still need to and want to optimise it further after this series of field trials.”

Cool Energy is an unlisted public company based in Perth and focused on the development of gas sweetening technologies with the aim of commercialising high-CO2 gas fields around the world.