SINTEF took an active role at Researchers’ Night 2023, from showing visitors inside the engine of a hydrogen car to explaining how CO₂ can be captured and stored in order to reduce our emissions.

Researchers’ Night is an annual event where students aged 16 to 18 and their teachers are invited to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) for an evening of science activities, lab visits and talks. This year was the nineteenth Researchers’ Night event, and over 1,000 students and teachers took part.

How can we cut our CO₂ emissions?

Towards the end of the evening, Research Scientist Ingrid Snustad (SINTEF Energy Research) gave a 20-minute talk on CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) to a room full of students and their teachers.

CO₂ has many uses and plants need CO₂ in order to grow. However, too much CO₂ in the atmosphere is the main driver of climate change. Ingrid started her speech by showing that even though text books still say that there is 0.03% carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the real number is closer to 0.04%.

She then gave a brief history of CCS in Norway, and described how the technology can be used to decarbonise a variety of industries, including cement and waste-to-energy. Both of these industries are part of “Longship”, the Norwegian government’s first, full-scale CCS project, which is due to enter into operation next year.

Ingrid continued by explaining the different ways that we can capture CO₂.  She also talked about how she works with CCS at SINTEF, such as conducting controlled tests of releasing pressurised CO₂, in order to understand how we design safe and cost-efficient pipelines.

“I felt very lucky to participate in Researchers’ Night. Many enthusiastic young people got to hear about and experience a wide range of research activities, and it’s great that some of them chose to listen to me talk about CCS. I hope to see some of them again as summer scientists or colleagues in a few years,” said Ingrid.

Source SINTEF