Abstract
Retro-fitting of post-combustion CO2 capture units to coal fired power plants is key to the transition to a net-zero CO2 emission reality. Different separation technologies have been found suitable for CO2 capture, but a more comprehensive approach is required to identify the most viable option among those commercially available. In this study we analyze the three most established technologies, namely absorption, adsorption and membrane separation, comparing both their exergetic efficiency and their total cost. This assessment provides an overview of the technical differences among the three capture routes and a realistic estimate of the expenditures associated with post-combustion CO2 capture, as of today.
Highlights
Pursuing the global goal of zero carbon-emissions by 2050 and keeping global warming below 1.5°C, carbon capture technologies offer a way to decarbonize a range of sectors, including the energy and the heavy industry sectors, where it is proving difficult to meaningfully reduce emissions in a near future[1,2,3]
They benefit from a more basic process structure, where fewer sub-processes and devices are involved[7]. Each one of these components is in general expensive and their cost tends to scale up linearly with the plant size, the price of the avoided CO2 can be positively affected by the overall process simplicity. Both technologies suffer from a strong limitation: Both commercial sorbents and commercial membranes for CO2 separation cannot cope with the moisture of the flue gas, requiring a pretreatment unit for dehydration (Figure 1)
We have presented a comparison between three commercially ready technologies for postcombustion CO2 capture, namely absorption, adsorption, and membranes
Summary
Pursuing the global goal of zero carbon-emissions by 2050 and keeping global warming below 1.5°C, carbon capture technologies offer a way to decarbonize a range of sectors, including the energy and the heavy industry sectors, where it is proving difficult to meaningfully reduce emissions in a near future[1,2,3]. Each one of these components is in general expensive (both in terms of capital and operational costs) and their cost tends to scale up linearly with the plant size, the price of the avoided CO2 can be positively affected by the overall process simplicity. Both technologies suffer from a strong limitation: Both commercial sorbents and commercial membranes for CO2 separation cannot cope with the moisture of the flue gas, requiring a pretreatment unit for dehydration (Figure 1). The twofold nature of the detailed techno-economic analysis we have performed allows us both to highlights the differences in the final results, and to justify them consistently with the intrinsic features of the chemical separation processes involved
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