Nuada's EIC Accelerator Captures CO2 Without Chemicals

Conventional carbon capture washes flue gas with an amine solvent and then boils the solvent to release the CO2, which is why bolting it onto a plant can consume a fifth of that plant's energy. Nuada, the trading name of Belfast's MOF Technologies, uses metal-organic frameworks instead: sponge-like crystalline materials with enormous internal surface area that adsorb CO2 and release it under vacuum. The process, which the company calls Adspire, runs entirely on electricity, needs no chemical solvents, and it claims cuts energy demand by up to 80%.

The EIC Accelerator selected the project, NUACO2, at its October 2024 cut-off as a grant-only award, and CORDIS records €2,493,418.85 from June 2025 to May 2027 to develop, validate and scale up new MOF reactor designs. The reactor, not the material, is the bottleneck: MOFs have been laboratory favourites for two decades, and getting gas through them at industrial flow rates is the engineering problem.

Three plants, three industries

Nuada's progress is measurable in installations rather than announcements. In June 2025 it completed a second pilot, Nuada Scout, on biomass flue gas at the Energy Innovation Centre at the University of Sheffield. In September 2025 its system went live at enfinium's Ferrybridge-1 energy-from-waste plant in West Yorkshire for a demonstration of at least six months. In January 2026 it agreed with MLC, a Lhoist UK subsidiary, to deploy a demonstration unit at the Singleton Birch lime plant in North Lincolnshire, where the CO2 comes from calcining limestone and cannot be avoided by changing fuel.

Each of those is a different gas stream, which matters: a capture technology that works on waste incineration flue gas does not automatically work on lime kiln off-gas. What none of them has produced in public is data, no capture rate, no purity, no energy consumption measured on site.

The first unit that is not a demonstration

On 9 July 2026 Nuada and the French energy group IDEX announced a partnership to build what they describe as one of Europe's first industrial units for capturing and using biogenic CO2, at IDEX's Kogeban biomass cogeneration plant in Hauts-de-France, capturing up to 10,000 tonnes a year. Part of the CO2 is to be purified and liquefied for local food and drink customers, replacing fossil CO2, and part stored geologically, which the companies describe as negative emissions.

IDEX is a substantial counterparty, with about 6,400 employees and €2.1 billion of turnover in 2025, and local authorities in the Somme are backing the project. Co-chief executive Conor Hamill called it "a decisive milestone" for the company's move from pilots to industrial rollout. No commissioning date has been published.

1. Pilots on real flue gasDoneTwo pilots completed, including biomass flue gas at Sheffield.
2. Units at industrial sitesOperatingLive at enfinium's Ferrybridge-1 since September 2025.
3. First industrial-scale projectAgreed10,000 tonnes a year with IDEX in France; no commissioning date.
4. 80% energy saving verifiedCompany claimNo measured data published from any installation.

A grant for the reactor, not the plant

Nuada's disclosed equity is modest for a company installing hardware at industrial sites: BGF's £3.4 million in 2023 extended a round co-led by the Clean Growth Fund and Barclays' Sustainable Impact Capital, and it has had close to £3 million of UK grant funding from UKRI and the energy department. The €2.49 million EIC grant is grant only, with no EIC Fund equity, and it is aimed squarely at the reactor design rather than at building plants, which the customers and their own capital pay for.

That is a sensible division of risk, and it also means the company's commercial progress depends on partners like enfinium and IDEX wanting capture for their own reasons: the UK's emissions trading and carbon border rules for waste incineration, and in France the value of biogenic CO2 to food and drink producers.

A Belfast company inside two carbon markets

Nuada straddles the UK and EU carbon regimes, which is unusual and useful: its Horizon Europe grant comes through the UK's association to the programme, its demonstrations are at British plants under the UK emissions trading scheme, and its first industrial unit is in France under the EU system, where biogenic CO2 can be sold or stored for removal credits. For hard-to-abate industries like lime and cement, where the CO2 comes from the chemistry rather than the fuel, there is no alternative to capture, which is why the EIC's climate tracker for this project sits at 100%.