Mitico Claims Thai Refinery Carbon Capture Test Crossed the 95% Threshold
Pasadena-based Mitico's post-combustion pilot at an unnamed Thai refinery adds a data point for potassium-sorbent capture, though cost and scale remain untested.
Mitico Inc said on Friday (2026-08-28) it had successfully completed a demonstration project at a refinery in Thailand for its carbon capture system, deploying a proprietary potassium-based chemical sorbent through custom-designed equipment on a post-combustion flue gas stream. The announcement, made without disclosing the refinery operator's name, represents the most advanced field test the Pasadena-based company has completed outside a laboratory setting.4
Refiners across Asia face tightening emissions scrutiny with few commercially proven capture options that work on dilute CO2 concentrations typical of refinery exhaust. Amine-based solvents dominate the existing market but carry heavy energy penalties during regeneration. Mitico's pitch rests on a claim that its platform, already validated at the California Institute of Technology, can capture over 95 percent of CO2 emissions from post-combustion sources including gas-run power plants — a threshold that buyers increasingly cite when evaluating retrofit proposals.4
A successful pilot is a technical data point, not proof of commercial viability at scale. CCS technology remains extremely expensive to incorporate into operations, with many projects relying on taxpayer support to reach final investment decision, Oilprice.com reported in July (2026-07-25). Refinery capture sits in a particularly awkward position: margins are thinner than in gas processing, and lower CO2 concentrations raise per-ton capture costs relative to point sources like cement or steel.3
The Thai test's specific configuration and capture volumes were not disclosed, leaving analysts without the data needed to benchmark Mitico's costs against amine-based rivals. That opacity is standard practice for early-stage demonstrations. But it limits any honest read of the economics.4
The addressable market backdrop is not trivial. Coal still accounts for roughly 35 percent of global electricity supply, and over 2,000 GW of capacity remains operational worldwide, according to Global Electricity Review data published in May (2026-05-20). That installed base represents a large theoretical market for capture vendors, yet retirement timelines in developed economies tend to move faster than retrofit decisions, narrowing the window for technologies like Mitico's to find buyers.1
Still, the company is pitching at scale. Mitico targets procurement of more than 10 million tons of captured credits by 2030, a figure cited in materials reviewed by Japan NRG in early June (2026-06-01). Reaching that number would require dozens of refinery or power plant installations, each dependent on a commercial agreement that has not yet been announced.2
Geography complicates the commercial case in Southeast Asia specifically. Canada and the United States both offer tax incentives that can push capture projects into positive territory. Thailand has no equivalent CO2 price mechanism, which means Mitico's Thai partners face the full unsubsidized cost of operating the system — a materially different economic calculus than a North American retrofit would involve. Oilprice.com noted in July (2026-07-25) that most CCS projects currently rely on taxpayer support to reach investment decisions.3
The CCS sector broadly has struggled to convert pilot successes into repeatable project pipelines. Developers have grown selective about which sites justify the capital outlay, and the industry's record of pilots that performed well technically before stalling on the balance sheet is long. Mitico's Caltech pedigree and its stated capture threshold give it a credible technical foundation. Whether that survives contact with refinery owners weighing a capture penalty against their refining margins is a different question.4,3
The next concrete milestone for the market to assess is whether Mitico names a commercial client, discloses a refinery partner, and publishes a capture cost per ton. Until that data is available, the Thai demonstration can be read as encouraging by the company's supporters and inconclusive by its skeptics — both positions are defensible on the evidence currently disclosed.4