Carbon Capture: How Waste-to-Energy Cuts CO2

May 19, 2026

0:00

How does carbon capture actually work, and what does it take to make it commercial?

Jörn Jakob, Director Innovation at EEW, and Eike Diedecke, who oversees the carbon capture pilot at the Delfzijl site, share what they are learning from the pilot project.

What you’ll hear in this episode:

Where the CO2 in waste actually comes from, and the impact of different waste compositions
How the capture process works step by step
What needs to fall into place for carbon capture to scale

The episode also covers why EEW chose the Netherlands as the first pilot site, and where the team is looking for partners on capture technology and CO2 utilisation.

This is the fourth episode in “Incineration in the Circular Economy,” a series sponsored by NEEW Ventures.

People

Jörn Jakob, Director Innovation at EEW
https://www.linkedin.com/in/j%C3%B6rn-jakob-124192214/

Eike Diedecke, Carbon Capture Project Leader at EEW
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eike-diedecke-365703221/

Patrick Hypscher, Circular Business Strategist, PaaS Expert
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hypscher/

Chapters

0:00 Intro
1:35 Meet Jörn Jakob
2:52 Why incineration plants emit CO2
4:48 EEW’s approach: amine scrubbing
5:32 The CC Mobile pilot at Delfzijl
6:46 Meet Eike Diedecke: inside the Delfzijl plant
8:36 How amine scrubbing works
11:38 Why carbon capture needs so much energy
12:35 The pilot’s real success criteria
15:02 What captured CO2 looks like
16:57 Back to Jörn: storage and pipelines
22:49 Why the Netherlands, not Germany
23:19 Regulation and partner search
27:23 Outro

About

EEW Energy from Waste GmbH (EEW) is one of Europe’s leading companies in the field of thermal waste and sewage sludge recovery. Today, EEW makes an important contribution to climate and resource protection and is therefore an essential part of the circular economy. At the company’s 17 current sites, around 5 million tonnes of waste per year can be used for energy recovery.

More than 1,400 employees take responsibility for using the energy in waste, reducing waste volumes, safely and harmlessly eliminating hazards from waste, and recycling scrap metal and composite materials. In addition, the energy contained in waste is used efficiently to generate process steam for industrial plants, district heating for residential areas and electricity produced in an environmentally friendly way.

Further Links

https://www.neew-ventures.com/
https://www.eew-energyfromwaste.com/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Intro

Eike Diedecke: This pilot plant is obviously not a commercial project, but more a learning exercise. So we don’t define the success by the amount of CO2 we capture, but rather the experience we collect.

Jingles: My name is Patrick Hypscher and this is Circularity.fm, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models.

Patrick Hypscher: You are listening to the fourth episode in the series, Incineration in the Circular Economy. In the previous episode, I was talking to Benedict, Managing Director and Founder of Wasteer. We discussed the value of data and how that can help to increase the efficiency of incineration, but also in cycling plants. In this episode, we will learn how EEW captures the carbon that is released during the incineration process. As usual, you get the key learnings from this conversation through our newsletter. Just sign up via www.circularity.fm. As engineer, he has spent his entire career designing, building and overseeing planned facilities. More than six years ago he joined EEW, where he holds the role of Director Innovation. Welcome, Jörn!

[00:01:35] Meet Jörn Jakob

Jörn Jakob: Good morning. Hi.

Patrick Hypscher: Jörn, we want to talk about carbon emissions today, but before we do so on a professional level, I’m pretty sure you’re super conscious of emissions also in your private life. How does it show in your daily life?

Jörn Jakob: Yes, you know, it affects all of us. And I had this small story in the morning when I went with my children to the kindergarten. We have always the discussion about, are we going by car or by bike? And today it was a little bit raining and my daughter said, oh, I would like to go by car. And I said, no, no, we will go by bike. That’s the first thing. And also the children were thinking about it. That’s the point I think it affects all of us.

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, definitely. I have the same. I had the same. So with the older one who’s now nearly three years at school. So he doesn’t discuss anymore.

Jörn Jakob: Yeah, it’s normally it’s a short way and it’s not that much time but of course the car is easy, and yeah.

[00:02:52] Why incineration plants emit CO2

Patrick Hypscher: Definitely, if it’s standing there. Cool. I mean, from bike to car, let’s get even bigger in terms of emissions and look at the plant level. Why are incineration plants emitting carbon dioxide in the first place?

Jörn Jakob: It’s because of the process. You know the CO2 is created when waste is burned.

Patrick Hypscher: Technically, I mean, the carbon is already embedded. It’s already there before the waste gets delivered to the EEW plant.

Jörn Jakob: Yeah. And then in the plant during the burning process, there is something at the end, we have the CO2 and it depends of course, of the input of waste, what kind of CO2 will be there.

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah. Can you give us a bit of a feeling what it means? So how much CO2 are we talking about?

Jörn Jakob: At EEW we have a capacity around 5 million tons of waste per year. And that means, as I said before, one ton of waste will be one ton of CO2. So that means we have 5 million tons of CO2 per year.

Patrick Hypscher: Okay. So, I understood technically this CO2 is embedded already in the waste, depending on the kind of waste you’re getting, the plants emit that emissions after the burning process. And our overall ambition as a society is to reduce emissions. So what are the kind of options you have, or like a plant has to reduce these emissions that, as I understood, I mean, the carbon is there. It’s in the input stream already. You can’t ignore that. But how can you deal with these emissions?

[00:04:48] EEW’s approach: amine scrubbing

Jörn Jakob: At EEW we are focused on CO2 capture after the combustion, the post combustion process. And the CO2 will remove from the flue gas. So we will have, for example, amine scrubbing as a chemical process. We will get out the CO2 out of the flue gas up to 90-95%. And then the flue gas, it’s more or less clean out or it’s out of CO2. And that’s the main focus we are at the moment because during the process or before the process, it’s quite difficult to capture the CO2.

Patrick Hypscher: And when you say you’re looking into that, what exactly is EEW doing there already?

[00:05:32] The CC Mobile pilot at Delfzijl

Jörn Jakob: We have bought a CO2 test plant. It’s a container where we can test the whole process. It’s a small container where, which in the month, let’s say 500 kilograms per day, which we can capture. And at the moment, the container is in Delfzijl. And so we can testing it, it’s a mobile unit. And after testing it in Delfzijl, after testing it in Delfzijl, we will go to the next site. You know, we have 17 different incineration plants with 17 different flue gas cleaning systems with 17 different input will change. So we really have to think about, okay, what will be the influence and how can we manage it for the EEW and what kind of solution is so that we have the test unit. We will start in Delfzijl at the beginning. You will see it with my colleagues. And then to go forward to test and improve the technology under real conditions, it’s quite important. And also to develop know-how at our staff and our workers at the plants. This is a new process, I said, it’s a real experience and this kind of technology.

[00:06:46] Meet Eike Diedecke: inside the Delfzijl plant

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, wonderful. Let’s follow that lead and let’s loop in the colleagues from Delfzijl and they will tell us more about the operations there. You’re a member of Jörn’s team and oversee the carbon capture pilot in Delfzijl. Before we look into the pilot, can you give us a brief description of what’s going on in Delfzijl? What kind of waste is the plant handling there?

Eike Diedecke: Of course, in Delfzijl we operate a waste to energy plant. That plant treats more than 500,000 tons of municipal and commercial waste annually.

Patrick Hypscher: Okay, so now let’s look at this CO2. So how is this actually collected?

Eike Diedecke: So in Delfzijl at the moment, we are using a mobile CO2 test facility. We call it CC Mobile because we plan on moving it from one waste to energy plant to another to test different flue gas compositions. And the process we are applying at the moment is a post combustion carbon capture process, meaning we capture the CO2 after the fuel or the waste is burned. So after the incineration process, we already have a flue gas cleaning system to meet regulations on our flue gas compositions.

Patrick Hypscher: The flue gas is just to get that straight is basically the gas that is created after the waste.

Eike Diedecke: It’s right. Like in your chimney, the gas that comes out of your chimney when you burn your wood in your oven.

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah.

[00:08:36] How amine scrubbing works

Eike Diedecke: Right, and this flue gas is already being cleaned at the moment because we have to meet regulations and this clean flue gas is then processed within our carbon capture unit. And we at the moment use a chemical process which is called amine scrubbing. Amine is the chemical that likes to grab the CO2 from gases. And if you’d like I can briefly take you through the process steps and explain what we do? Yeah, let’s do it. So the first step would be cooling down the flue gas. Usually we have a flue gas temperature of around 100-150 degrees Celsius, but the capture process likes temperatures around 40 to 50 degrees Celsius. So the first step would be just throwing water on the flue gas, cold water to cool it down and prepare it for the upcoming process. The second step would be taking the cooled flue gas into the so-called absorber, which is a big reactor. If you drove past a chemical plant, you might have seen the silverish, shiny, big thermos flask looking like the bottles you usually put your tea in. It’s the same for us. We have a 14 meter high silver reactor where we lead the flue gas into the bottom. The flue gas goes up the reactor. And from the top, we sprinkle down the amine solution. So it meets within this column. And the liquid amine solution grabs the CO2 from the flue gas and goes to the bottom. And the flue gas, without the CO2, escapes through the top of the absorber and goes back to our chimney. So then we have the CO2 captured in the liquid state that reacted with the amine. And now we want to have the pure CO2. So what we do is lead the liquid solution into the desorber column. We had the absorber. Now we go into the desorber. And then we reheat the whole solution. For example, steam into the desorber column, which is also a chemical reactor, and sprinkle the CO2 amine solution from the top and put in steam from the bottom or heat, apply heat from the bottom. So it heats up. And with heat, the amine doesn’t like the CO2 anymore and releases it. So at the bottom, we have the pure amine solution again. And at the top of the desorber, we can lead the CO2 out to process it further or use it as we wish.

[00:11:38] Why carbon capture needs so much energy

Patrick Hypscher: Okay, that actually sounds pretty straightforward. So and it sounds like a powerful amine that you have there. Carbon capture is usually framed as high energy or energy intensive. Why is that?

Eike Diedecke: The capture process itself is energy intense because you need the steam or heat in the desorber to release the CO2 again from the amine. So you have to undo the chemical reaction that happened in the absorber and it doesn’t do it on its own. So you have to give it some something to release it again. And this something is a lot of energy and it can cost quite good amount of the overall energy output of a power plant itself.

[00:12:35] The pilot’s real success criteria

Patrick Hypscher: So that this is then one driver that also makes it so expensive. Okay. And now, as we described, discussed with Jörn as well, so this is a pilot and you chose a mobile unit to test it in different plants with different flue gas composition. What are the success criteria you’re looking at to see if this pilot is successful?

Eike Diedecke: Yeah. So first of all, for us, this pilot plant is obviously not a commercial project, but more learning exercise. So we don’t define the success by the amount of CO2 we capture, but rather the experience we collect. We have on the one side, the more boring raw data questions we ask, for example, which are the perfect operating temperatures, which are the best cycling amounts of amines. You can set the pumps, how much amine they cycle in a circle, which is a very, important number for the overall energy efficiency. But now you see it gets boring. But these are the hard facts we ask when we look at the process. We want to make the mistakes you can do with such a process on a small scale. So when we scale up this, yeah, for us unknown technology, we already hopefully made all the mistakes on a small scale. And we want to share this experience. We want to share this experience not only within the EEW group with our colleagues on site and our colleagues in the engineering and commercial departments, but also with partners, for example, amine research people or authorities that are not very experienced when it comes to these processes. They can take a look at our process, see, okay, what goes in, what comes out, what do we have to look at and how, for example, can we measure certain things? This is a very important question. For example, when you want to have a permit for such a plant.

[00:15:02] What captured CO2 looks like

Patrick Hypscher: Okay. And I can my last question coming a bit back to the process is so how do I have to imagine this CO2 look like? So it’s in the air, it’s invisible. Now you captured it. Is it green? Is it blue? What’s the composition?

Eike Diedecke: It’s green because it’s biogenic and not. Jokes aside, the CO2 comes out as it comes into the process. You can still not see it in the original state coming out of our process. But then it depends on what you want to do with it. So most certainly, if you want to transport the CO2 over long distances, for example, under the sea under the North Sea as Norwegians are doing it right now. You need to compress and cool it down to liquefy the CO2. So it actually has a liquid state which has a couple of advantages compared to a gaseous state. For example, you can put more of a liquid CO2 on a smaller, on the same room compared to gaseous CO2. Transport costs go down. But generally, when it comes out of our process, it’s firstly gaseous. So you still can’t see it, but it’s pure and not in our flue gas anymore.

[00:16:57] Back to Jörn: storage and pipelines

Patrick Hypscher: But I believe you. I can’t see it, but I believe you. Okay, cool. Let’s go back to Jörn and discuss what happens with the carbon you captured in this pilot and what are the next steps. Thanks, Eike.

Jörn Jakob: Thank you.

Patrick Hypscher: Jörn, we just heard from the Delfzijl colleagues how the mobile testing unit works there. And we learned that the carbon is kind of captured there. But what happens after it has been captured to the carbon?

Jörn Jakob: In the test units, the CO2 is captured, analyzed and evaluated. After currently released back into the flue gas. But we are looking for partners who would like to test further use cases for this. The key question for us will be what can we do with the CO2? Is it utilization, CCU or storage, CCS? Both are currently economically challenges, really have to think about it. But at the moment, we will capture the CO2 and think, okay, what can we do with this? And this is one of our challenges. I’m looking for partners and find solutions for this.

Patrick Hypscher: Okay, so technically right now you’re taking a step-by-step approach. You already capture it, see how it works, how does it influence the process? And since there’s no solution yet for using it, storing it, you release it once again. So it’s a bit like status quo, but you get these learnings and now you then want to explore what to do with the carbon. Yeah. Okay. And just to separate storage and utilization, to me it feels like storage sometimes even happened before utilization because probably in ideal world you can utilize the carbon immediately but sometimes you have to transfer it, it has to sit there to be used. So storage seems to be a topic you have to think about in any case.

Jörn Jakob: Yeah, the storage often is a long way to the sea for example, also in the Netherlands, but also in Germany, it’s quite a challenge. How can we restore the CO2? The first thing, okay, we have to capture it. That’s our part. It’s quite easy, but to store it, we need a transport system. And this could be a pipeline or a train, but it’s not existing at the moment. There’s no pipelines. There will be no pipelines in the next two, five, ten or 15 years, I guess. So that’s really one of our challenge. Okay. How can we transport the CO2 from also from the South? We have their incineration plants from the South to the North. It’s quite long distance and how can we transport it? It makes no sense to transport it with the truck, for example, then we will produce CO2 to transport the CO2, which we would like to store. So the best thing would be a pipeline, but currently there’s no pipeline and in the near future, will not be no pipeline. And it’s also quite expensive to transport it. Also, there’s a pipeline, it’s quite expensive to build the pipeline and everything. So the question is, okay, how can we get a business case also for the storage process? If we have, for example, directly in the neighborhood, somebody who needs CO2 in this process and the chemical process, and you can use utilization, it makes sense, but at the moment there’s no market for the CO2. We can say, look, EEW, we captured 2.5 million tons of CO2. For example, that would be the amount we have to do to be climate neutral. And how can we do that? If there’s no need at the market to have 2.5 million tons of CO2, because you know, for the process, as I said before, the amine scrubbing process need a lot of energy. We need steam and the steam we can of course use to produce electricity or to produce a district heat or to deliver it to some customers. So that always depends. What are we doing with our steam? For example, when we have an incineration plant, we need 20 or up to 30 % of the steam to capture the whole CO2.

Patrick Hypscher: I start to understand the complexity behind it.

Jörn Jakob: Yeah. And then, and then that’s only how we capture it, but then often you only have to capture it, you only have to transport it and to store it. And this is quite expensive over all the costs.

Patrick Hypscher: So technically right now the infrastructure to transport it is missing and also there’s not much demand right now. But to me it sounds like, so if I recall the conversation I had with Sebastian about where the waste incineration sits in the industrial system and the energy system, it was interesting to learn that it’s kind of an industrial symbiosis between waste incineration in some industrial companies that need, for example, steam or municipalities that need heat. So it’s a bit like a regional question also. And as you mentioned, that could also be a part of the future for carbon that you don’t want to transport it over hundreds of kilometers. Ideally, you have someone who consumes it, uses it next door.

Jörn Jakob: That’s quite hard. But when we talk about the steam and district heating, for example, district heating, we will need in January, February, maybe in December, that will be the coldest month. But the rest of the year, you can use the steam for carbon capture. So you don’t have to say it’s only this way or this way. You have to find a solution for both things. But at the end, yeah, it’s a big challenge for us.

[00:22:49] Why the Netherlands, not Germany

Patrick Hypscher: We talked a bit about geography and we learned about the Delfzijl pilot. Why is it running in the Netherlands and not in Germany?

Jörn Jakob: There we have already the most advanced and developed and we have good local conditions and infrastructure. Here we will start with our test unit but the next step will be in Germany.

[00:23:19] Regulation and partner search

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, okay. And I was wondering if regulation was one of the motivators, which brings me to my topic because I mean, sometimes for people who follow the conversation, regulation seems to be an issue. It’s a rather new topic. Many companies are exploring it. And of course, like regulation also has to pick up what are the changes in regulation that are necessary to make it an affordable instrument. We need.

Jörn Jakob: Clear and a framework, regulatory framework. We need the pipeline, we need the infrastructure. As I said before, we need potential, some storage where we really can use it. Also in Germany, we need that must always develop. We need, okay, what kind of specification is necessary for the pipeline, for example, also discussion. So the whole framework for the whole process that we get a business case for the process. At the moment, there is no business case. And the main question is what can we do with the CO2? But if there’s no framework, also political and economically, then there will not be no CO2 capture unit because it’s too expensive at the end. And if there’s no business case, nobody will do it.

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah, sure, for sure. And as it became clear together, we are at the beginning here and EEW is trying out how to deal with it. And with every new step, you have probably five more questions and the need for additional expertise and partners. So can you give us some examples of unsolved challenges where you look for partners right now and where some of the people who listening right now might reach out to you and say, hey, we could contribute.

Jörn Jakob: One of the challenges of course is to find the right technology for the carbon capture process. As I said before, we only see at the moment amine scrubbing for the technical readiness level that we say, we can scale it up and it could be, let’s say 100,000 tons per year we can capture with this kind of technology. But this technology, we need a lot of steam and a lot of energy. So if there’s there are of course other developments and we are already doing a lot of technology screening at the market. There are technologies which not use that much energy for the process. That was of course helpful for us to find a better technology that we can use less energy for the process. That was of course one challenge and to develop this kind of technology would also be one of our part and we are looking at the technology screening with my team and what we can do there. And on the other part, as I said before, it’s one of our challenge. What can we do with the CO2? And if there is somebody who said, okay, we need a lot of CO2 and I really have a good solution for the CO2. And for this, we are looking forward for some partners and develop some new technology also in this part, because this will one of our main challenge. What can we do with the CO2 in the near future, especially in also in the next 10 or 15 years. And this is a problem for all of us to find a good solution because they will be all the process will be there. There will be waste and the waste will be burned in our incineration plant and there will be the CO2, but we have to capture it and we have to find good solution for it.

Patrick Hypscher: Okay, yeah, wonderful. So if you’re out there listening right now, please have some solutions to capture, utilize or store carbon, reach out to Jörn and his team. Jörn, thanks a lot for giving us these insights and for your work in capturing carbon.

Jörn Jakob: Yes, you’re welcome. Thanks a lot.

[00:27:23] Outro

Patrick Hypscher: This was the fourth episode of the series Incineration in the Circular Economy. You get the key learnings from this conversation in a one-pager which you can access through our newsletter. Just sign up for it at www.circularity.fm. In the next episode we will look at the sustainability report of EEW and especially the discussion about landfilling versus waste incineration. But in between there will be a special episode, the anniversary episode 100 of Circularity.fm and a surprise guest. Until then, stay tuned, drive a profitable circular economy and please don’t forget, the most abundant renewable resource is your imagination.