3D DMX

The Dunkirk carbon capture project is a pilot demonstration of the DMX™ post-combustion CO₂ capture process, developed by IFP Energies nouvelles (IFPEN) and marketed by Axens to show industrial viability of a next-generation solvent system for capturing CO₂ from high-emission gas streams such as steel blast furnace flue gas. The demonstration plant is located at ArcelorMittal’s steelworks in Dunkirk, France, and began operating under stable conditions in April 2023 as part of the 3D (DMX Demonstration in Dunkirk) project funded under the EU Horizon 2020 program. The DMX™ technology uses an amine demixing solvent to capture CO₂ at low to medium partial pressures typical of industrial flue gases, reducing energy consumption compared with first-generation amine processes. During operation, the pilot has shown consistent CO₂ capture rates above 90 % and produces CO₂ at high purity (> 99.5 %) with strong solvent stability after thousands of hours of continuous testing. The demonstration unit captures about 0.5 tonnes of CO₂ per hour from blast furnace gas at the Dunkirk site and serves as a technical validation step toward designing industrial-scale capture facilities capable of capturing up to about 1 million tonnes of CO₂ per year from steel operations. The wider 3D project consortium includes industrial and research partners such as ArcelorMittal, TotalEnergies, Air Products, Brevik Engineering, John Cockerill, DTU, Gassco, ETH Zürich, and others, and prepares the foundation for a future Dunkirk-North Sea CO₂ storage cluster targeting multi-million-tonne annual capture and storage capaci