Cogeneration concepts for CO 2 separation from power plants for enhanced oil recovery applications

Abstract

A large amount of carbon dioxide (CO 2) is being produced from fossil fuel fired power plants and discharged into the atmosphere annually. As a result, the discharged CO 2 is now suspected to have caused the greenhouse effect and global warming problem. To overcome this CO 2 emission problem, there is great interest, especially in Canada, to capture carbon dioxide and utilize it as a flooding agent for the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process. In the past few years, a number of feasibility studies and a few testing pilot projects on CO 2 extraction from power plants were performed. However, their results have showed that even though it is technically feasible to extract CO 2 from power plants, its cost is high for the EOR application in the current crude petroleum market. A major reason for the high cost is that the CO 2 extracting process requires a substantial amount of energy. This paper demonstrates how cogeneration concepts together with optimization design strategies would help to reduce the CO 2 production cost by utilizing low-pressure steams and waste-heats from various sections of the power generation processes for extracting CO 2. The economics and technical feasibilities of these concepts are described and the practical implications given Western Canada's resources for EOR applications are discussed.