Welcome to IFRF’s Monday Night Mail, where we are making great progress with plans for the 2025 IFRF Conference. A dedicated web-page has now been created which includes a high-level programme, the first Keynote Speakers and the Scientific Committee members confirmed so far- please see below for more details on this.

Registration closes on 31 August 2024 for the upcoming workshop ‘Digital twins for the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate industries’. As a reminder, the workshop takes place in Thessaloniki, Greece on 12-13 September 2024 and is organised by CYPHER with support from the IFRF.

Combustion Industry News round-up, as ever, covers a wide range of topical items. I noted with interest the article on a FEED study to assess the capture of 800ktCO2/y at a US pulp and paper mill. Since the process removes more CO2 from the atmosphere than is emitted from the process, it can achieve negative emissions. For the North American pulp and paper industry overall, this represents a CO2 removal opportunity of up to 130 MtCO2/y. 

And in my two articles, I report on a recent announcement from US company KBR on their launch of a suite of low and zero-carbon technologies aimed at decarbonising key parts of the petrochemical industry. This sees the use of catalytic partial oxidation (CPOx) technology from Korea Institute of Machinery Materials to convert methane-rich fuel into hydrogen-rich fuel. In the second article, the ongoing importance of coal based power generation in China is recognised with the launch of a low-carbon transformation plan. This will diversify financing channels and grant preferential loan policies to projects focusing on co-firing methods together with CCUS and electricity transmission.