Four Firsts: MOF Carbon Capture Hits Alberta Gas Lines

A four-company Alberta deal installs MOF-based CO2 capture directly on gas compressors, marking four industry firsts in one project

2 Jun 2026

Four companies have agreed to deploy distributed carbon capture equipment on natural gas compression engines in Alberta, marking the first such installation in Canada and introducing a new class of capture material to the technology.

Announced on February 12, the $4.7mn project pairs CarbonQuest's capture units with MOF adsorbents from Captivate Technology, installed at Tourmaline Oil's Banshee facility near Edson. Emissions Reduction Alberta contributed $2.1mn through the provincial TIER Fund.

MOF, or metal-organic framework, is a porous material engineered at the molecular scale to bind CO2 selectively, releasing it at lower energy cost than conventional chemical-based systems. At Banshee, Captivate's MOF will operate inside a vacuum pressure swing adsorption unit designed to capture roughly four tonnes of CO2 per day. Captured gas moves by pipeline to an on-site system for permanent underground storage.

The deal carries four claimed industry firsts: CarbonQuest's first deployment on gas compression engines, and the first integration anywhere of Captivate's MOF into a CarbonQuest capture unit.

Tourmaline, Canada's largest natural gas producer, has pursued emission intensity reductions since 2021. Selecting Banshee as the pilot site suggests point-source compressor capture is entering operational planning at major producers.

Broader replication is the underlying logic. Alberta hosts hundreds of compressor stations with profiles similar to Banshee. Validating this configuration at one site opens a potential pathway across that inventory. For a gas sector navigating pressure to cut emissions without reducing output, compressor-level distributed capture may prove the more practical route forward.