CO2 Capture for Dry Reforming of Natural Gas: Performance and Process Modeling of Calcium Carbonate Looping Using Acid Based CaCO3 Sorbent

Muhammad Afiq Zubir,Nurfanizan Afandi,Abreeza Manap,Bamidele Victor Ayodele,Wen Liu,Mohd Kamaruddin Abd Hamid,Awaluddin Abdul Hamid

doi:10.3389/fenrg.2020.610521

Abstract

Several industrial activities often result in the emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane (a principal component of natural gas). In order to mitigate the effects of these greenhouse gases, CO2 can be captured, stored and utilized for the dry reforming of methane. Various CO2 capture techniques have been investigated in the past decades. This study investigated the performance and process modeling of CO2 capture through calcium carbonate looping (CCL) using local (Malaysia) limestone as the sorbent. The original limestone was compared with two types of oxalic acid-treated limestone, with and without aluminum oxide (Al2O3) as supporting material. The comparison was in terms of CO2 uptake capacity and performance in a fluidized bed reactor system. From the results, it was shown that the oxalic acid-treated limestone without Al2O3 had the largest surface area, highest CO2 uptake capacity and highest mass attrition resistance, compared with other sorbents. The sorbent kinetic study was used to design, using an Aspen Plus simulator, a CCL process that was integrated with a 700 MWe coal-fired power plant from Malaysia. The findings showed that, with added capital and operation costs due to the CCL process, the specific CO2 emission of the existing plant was significantly reduced from 909 to 99.7 kg/MWh.

Highlights

Global climate change has remained as one of the major environmental issues of the past decades
The main finding of this work is the usage of Malaysian limestone as sorbent in calcium looping process and investigation of the CO2 uptake capacity of this limestone
A study on the performance and process modeling of a 700 MWe coal-fired power plant integrated with a calcium carbonate looping process that uses oxalic-acid treated limestone was successfully carried out

Summary

Introduction

Global climate change has remained as one of the major environmental issues of the past decades. Human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels, industrial processes, and various land uses have significantly contributed to the release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) into the atmosphere. According to Anderson and Newell (2004), CO2 is the most dominant gas of the released GHGs. The increase in CO2 emissions will cause an overabundance of greenhouse gases that trap additional heat. The increase in CO2 emissions will cause an overabundance of greenhouse gases that trap additional heat It will cause the Earth’s temperature to increase, which will melt the ice at the poles and lead to the rise of sea level. The largest contributors to CO2 gas emissions are power plant industries (Abeydeera et al, 2019) and they account for a third

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