Assessing the Economics of CO2 Capture in China's Steel Plant

Abstract

This paper provides a techno-economic analysis of a hypothetical first-of-its-kind CO2 capture and storage project in a modern Chinese steel production plant. It assumes the use of amine capture technology of the relatively high concentration CO2 emissions from the iron making process. The technical configuration of the project was modelled using the Advanced System for Process Engineering (ASPEN), combined with a financial model. Global crude steel production reached 1.6 billion tonnes in 2015, an increase of 41% over the 1.1 billion tonnes in 2005. China alone produced 804 million tonnes of crude steel in 2015, an increase of 130% over the 350 million tonnes in 2005. Applying environmentally-friendly and low-carbon technologies is the major future trend for the steel sector globally. The EU Commission’s Low Carbon Roadmap anticipates a global emission intensity of less than 0.2 tCO2 per tonne of crude steel by the end of 2050 compared to the current level of above 1.3 tCO2 per tonne, and China’s average of 2.18 tCO2 per tonne in 2014. The Roadmap suggests carbon capture and storage is a key technology to achieve larger emission reductions in the iron/steel sector. The cost of CO2 avoidance for the modelled 0.5 million tonne/year capacity CO2 capture project with transport and storage is USD69/tCO2. Assuming that the project runs at 90% capacity (0.45 MtCO2/year), over 25 years, the project would capture 11.25 MtCO2. However, this is offset by emissions from increased energy consumption so the project would only reduce aggregate emissions by 0.36 MtCO2/year, or a total of 8.88 MtCO2 over its lifetime. The cost of CO2 avoidance is sensitive to a number of assumptions, including the discount rate and the cost of CO2 transportation and storage. The discount rate of the capture project is assumed to be 12%, taking into account the cost of capital of Bao Steel and the risk of the CO2 capture project. If a project is considered as a moderate risk investment applying an 8% discount rate, the cost of CO2 avoidance (i.e. the abatement cost) will be reduced from USD69/t CO2 to USD64/tCO2. The assumption on transport and storage cost could be lower if the project could share the infrastructure with other large stationary emission sources.