The Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco) said in a press release issued yesterday that it signed Thursday three memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with leading American companies to advance the development of potential lower-carbon energy solutions.
Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman al Saud and visiting US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm attended the signing ceremony.
According to the release, following a successful trial of Aeroseal’s technology in Saudi Arabia, Aramco and Aeroseal agreed to explore opportunities to accelerate the deployment of Aeroseal’s technology in the company’s building fleet and elsewhere; pursue joint testing of building ductwork and envelopes nationwide, to uncover the most prominent opportunities; commercialize the technology in novel applications such as gas pipelines; and localize Aeroseal’s supply chain in Saudi Arabia.
With Spiritus, Aramco agreed to explore opportunities in the field of direct air capture.
According to the release, Spiritus’ novel approach to direct air capture could address the major cost challenges of current direct air capture approaches; it includes reducing energy needs, passive air collection, and a proprietary sorbent material to potentially remove carbon from the atmosphere at up to a tenfold increase in adsorption efficiency compared to existing methods.
Aramco and Rondo agreed to explore deployment of heat batteries in Aramco’s global facilities to reduce operating costs and support emissions reduction initiatives.
The release said the companies have started engineering studies for a first industrial-scale deployment of Rondo Heat Batteries that could contribute to reduction of emissions from Aramco facilities, with subsequent scale up to 1GWh.
Aramco Senior Vice President of Technology, Oversight and Coordination Ali Al-Meshari said: “Aramco has stated its ambition to achieve net zero and greenhouse gas emissions across its wholly-owned operated assets by 2050, and sees opportunities to potentially build a lower-carbon new energy business.”
He added that innovative technologies deployed at scale can help lower the cost of reducing carbon emissions, and that Aramco is investing in developing these through its R&D, venture capital, and technology deployment programs.
“We see the technologies of Aeroseal, Spiritus’, and Rondo to have the potential to scale globally, and specifically in the Middle East,” Al-Meshari said.
