DecarbonICE Pushes Dry Ice CO2 Shipping as Cost Saver

Danish company DecarbonICE is advancing efforts to establish a complete value chain for transporting carbon dioxide in its solid state—dry ice—as a more economical and efficient alternative to moving it as a liquid.

The firm aims to highlight the advantages of using dry ice pellets, transported in standard 20-foot containers equipped with added insulation but without active refrigeration. The CO₂ is kept at -78.5°C, maintained at atmospheric pressure, similar to LNG transport conditions but without pressurised tanks.

In a recent trial, DecarbonICE successfully shipped dry ice by sea from Århus, Denmark to Reykjavik, Iceland. The CO₂ was first trucked 100 kilometers to the Port of Århus, where it was transferred directly onto the vessel—no intermediate storage was necessary.

The shipping leg was completed using Eimskip’s 2020-built vessel, the Bruarfoss, with a capacity of 2,150 TEU. Each container transported 20 metric tons of dry ice, with sublimation losses recorded at just 0.3% per day.

According to DecarbonICE, the cost of one of its insulated containers is 15 to 20 times cheaper than a pressurised cryogenic tank holding the same volume of liquid CO₂. Additionally, using container ships to move 20,000 tonnes of CO₂ is 60% more cost-effective than relying on dedicated LCO₂ tankers.

The system is highly adaptable, allowing for easy transfer across different modes of transportation—truck, rail, barge, or ship—with no need for extensive safety buffers. These dry ice containers can also be integrated seamlessly with standard cargo operations.

While converting captured CO₂ into dry ice and back does require additional capital and operational expenditures, DecarbonICE claims these are fully offset by lower overall transportation costs, especially during the maritime leg.

The company is now moving toward commercial deployment, beginning with a smaller-scale project involving the transport of CO₂ captured from a biogas plant.