The OCTAVIUS project is part of the 7^th framework programme of the European Commission. Gathering 17 partners comprising 15 European partners and 2 South African partners, the OCTAVIUS project is conceived as contributing to demonstration of integrated concepts for zero emission power plants covering all the components needed for power generation as well as CO₂ capture and compression.

OCTAVIUS gathers the leading organisations within the field of CCS and clean coal, covering the whole value chain from research institutes to end-users. The consortium consists of 5 research organisations, 2 universities, 1 SME, 1 engineering company, 2 equipment suppliers and 6 power generators.

OCTAVIUS builds upon previous FP6 and FP7 CCS projects such as CASTOR and CESAR. The main coordinating research institutes and industrial partners of these projects also take part in OCTAVIUS. Results of the clean coal research are provided by end-users, engineering companies and technology vendors partnering in OCTAVIUS.

The objectives of the OCTAVIUS project are:

• To demonstrate operability and flexibility of first generation post-combustion processes on pilot plants in preparation of full scale demonstration projects such as the ROAD and Porto Tolle projects that will start in 2015-2016. Experimental studies will be carried out at 3 different industrial pilot plants (TNO pilot at Maasvlakte, ENEL pilot at Brindisi, EnBW pilot at Heilbronn). Based on the results of the pilot campaigns, OCTAVIUS will establish detailed guidelines with relevant data on emissions, operability, flexibility and cost aspects as well as health and safety (HSE) issues, for first generation CO₂ capture processes.
• To further study the DMX^TM process in lab scale. This second generation capture process which resulted from IFPEN research uses phase change solvents and aims at an energy consumption of around 2.3 MJ/kgCO₂ captured. Thus, it can enable a substantial reduction in the energy penalty and operational costs. 
• To establish guidelines for commercial scale demonstration units in South Africa. Participation to the project of ESKOM and EcoMetrix will help these South African companies to establish the appropriate timeframe for such demonstration units in South Africa through exchange with the European partners.

The first results targeted are:

• Evaluation and establishment of the tools to be used for steady state simulations, dynamic simulations and cost estimation. These tools will be used to interpret experimental results to be obtained from different pilot plants and also to realise the benchmarking studies.
• Results of the first campaign to be carried at the TNO pilot plant at Maasvlakte. Target of this 6 weeks campaign will be mainly emission control and reduction. Special attention will be paid to emission of by-products from solvent degradation. The TNO pilot plant is well modelled and there is a lot of experience with the operation of this plant from previous projects such as the Dutch National project CATO.