The Air Products Vattenfall Oxyfuel CO2 Compression and Purification Pilot Plant at Schwarze Pumpe

Abstract

Air Products has in the last couple of years been working with Vattenfall to realise the ambition of building the world's frist coplete pilot of the technology that would be use to purify the raw CO2 from a commercial-scale coal-fired oxyfuel boiler. The pilot demonstrates three concepts that will together lead to an optimised, lowest cost, highest efficiency oxyfuel CO2 capture plant: sour compression, auto-refrigeration and membrane recovery of CO2 and O2 from the vent stream. This pilot plant will allow important data to be collected to assist in the design and optimisation of the next step: a demonstration plant. The technology supplied by Air Products was one of several technologies being evaluated by Vattenfall for the oxyfuel demonstration project that had been proposed in Jänschwalde, Germany. The agreed test program between Vattenfall and Air Products contains a number of identified R&D topics. The main results from the first tests will be presented in this paper. These initial tests involve establishing material and energy balances over the different main plant components as a first step. This will be continued by parametric testing on the warm-end of the pilot plant over the flue gas cooler/condenser and acid removal columns with the main goal of understanding the influence of these parameters on the SO2 and NOx chemistry and support process modelling activities.