Commercial Carbon Capture Research Articles

Experimental study on the performance of a highly efficient NE‐1 absorbent for CO2 capture

AbstractCO2 capture by absorption and stripping with aqueous amine is a well‐understood and widely used technology. However, drawbacks still exist in the practical applications, such as high energy consumption and easy degradation of the absorbents during the desorption process. In this paper, a novel NE‐1 absorbent was developed, and its suitable operating conditions were determined: concentration (45 wt.%), absorption temperature (40 °C), and desorption temperature (100 °C). The NE‐1 absorbent exhibits a high CO2 absorption capacity of 3.73 mol/kg, 1.33 times that of 30% monoethanolamine (MEA). After optimizing with carbamide as a corrosion inhibitor, 45% NE‐1a1 may attain an effective CO2 capacity of 2.5 mol/kg and over 70% desorption rate in five cycles, demonstrating excellent cycling stability performance. The research results have significant implications for developing an efficient and stable commercial carbon capture solvent and promoting the development of carbon reduction technologies. © 2024 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Wetting Kinetics of Lithium-Sodium Orthoborate on Nickel and Stainless Steel under CO2-Lean and Saturated Conditions.

Contact angle measurements were conducted on lithium-sodium orthoborate, an alkali-metal borate-based high-temperature carbon capture sorbent, in contact with nickel and stainless steel under air, N2, and CO2 atmospheres at 600 °C in order to assess the compatibility of this innovative sorbent with packed-bed reactors, typically used in the commercial carbon capture industry. On nickel, the results reveal the melt to be wetting (contact angle θ ≤ 90°), albeit with a contact angle reaching an apparent equilibrium over the experimental time considered. It was found that θ was lower under N2 than under CO2, which was explained as a consequence of the oxide-ion activity difference between the CO2-lean and saturated melts. On stainless steel, however, the melt rapidly spreads, tending toward complete wetting of the metal sheet (θ = 0°) in all atmospheres. For the two metals investigated, the results indicate high to very high wettability, hence the adequacy of using lithium-sodium orthoborate in conventional gas-liquid contactors, further backing this sorbent as a potential alternative to existing sorbents for CO2 capture.

4-dimensional seismic interpretation to monitor CO2 injection in carbon capture & storage project of Sleipner field, North Sea, Norway using inversion method

Sleipner is the world's first commercial Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project, located off the coast of Norway, with the goal of reducing carbon emissions by capturing CO2 and storing it in a utsira saline aquifer sandstone reservoir capable of storing up to 600 billion tonnes of CO2. The CO2 injection in these projects increases year after year, so the CO2 development must be monitored to see the distribution pattern and its implications for the reservoir zone. The purpose of this research is to calculate and model the CO2 distribution resulting from acoustic impedance inversion using 4-dimensional inversion, to calculate the repeatability from seismic data between baseline and monitor using the Normalized Root Mean Square attribute. In the processing, baseline and monitor data must be matched in the overburden zone using a cross-equalization process so that the inversion process. The results revealed a correlation between the two seismic data sets (baseline and monitor) with the classification of Reasonable Repeatability, and CO2 distribution in a securely stored reservoir that spreads laterally and does not leak.

Results of the 2020 and 2021 campaigns of the commercial carbon capture plant at AVR Duiven

Results of the 2020 and 2021 campaigns of the commercial carbon capture plant at AVR Duiven

Study on the chemical absorption main heat exchanger and process modification for 150kt/y CCS demonstration project

In this paper, the heat transfer exchanger with higher heat transfer coefficient and process modification of a 150 kt/y chemical absorption CCS demonstration project is introduced. The fully welded plate heat exchanger and tubular falling film reboiler is first employed in commercial carbon capture system for reducing the system investment. The cold lean/rich solution temperature difference of the lean/rich solution heat exchanger can reduce to 5 K due to the high heat transfer coefficient of fully welded plate heat exchanger. The falling film reboiler process could improve the gas/liquid separation efficicency.The inter-cooling process is set on the bottom structured packing section for increasing the rich CO2 loading in the carbon absorber. The modified rich split and lean vapor compression process are applied to this project. The stripper diameter of the top section can reduce to 2.4–3.2 m, which could improve the heat transfer coefficient of the top section in the stripper. The optimal rich solution split ratio is about 12.5% of the total rich solution which out from the absorber. The solution regeneration duty saving is about 0.6 GJ/t CO2 when the flash pressure choose as 0.7 bar.

First North Dakota CCS Project: Advancing North Dakota Ethanol Economics

The Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC), in partnership since 2016 with North Dakota ethanol producer Red Trail Energy (RTE), the North Dakota Industrial Commission (NDIC), the U.S. Department of Energy, and Trimeric Corporation, has determined that commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technically viable option for the significant reduction of CO2 emissions from ethanol production at the RTE site near Richardton, North Dakota. In addition, CCS may be economically viable for RTE should pathways be approved for this lower-carbon-intensity ethanol in developing low-carbon fuel (LCF) programs. Current activities are allowing project partners to move closer to creating the first integrated CCS effort in North Dakota. Capture Facility Moves Closer to Construction. Project partner, Trimeric Corporation, developed process flow diagrams (PFDs), heat and material balances, piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&IDs), and utilities documents specific to the RTE project site to prepare a bid package for potential vendor response. Three vendor bids for the potential liquefied CO2 system were received and evaluated. A CO2 capture process design package document was developed, compiling the PFDs, heat and material balances, and P&IDs, including recommendations from the vendor bids received. Geophysical Survey Provides More Clarity of the Subsurface. An 8-square-mile 3-D geophysical survey was conducted at the RTE site near Richardton, North Dakota, in March 2019. Data processing and interpretation from the seismic acquisition survey have been completed. Results were incorporated into the geologic modeling simulation efforts from the first stage of the project to determine recommended locations for the future stratigraphic test. Baseline Near-Surface Monitoring Begins. The EERC is investigating seasonal changes related to the natural carbon cycle of regional soil and groundwater in the study region near Richardton, North Dakota. Groundwater- and soil gas-monitoring activities included meter readings on location as well as sample collection for a full suite of laboratory analyses to establish natural water and soil gas conditions through several seasons. Three sampling events were conducted in May, August, and November 2019. Preparing the First North Dakota Underground Injection Control (UIC) Class VI Permit Application. North Dakota’s Class VI Program requires all owners/operators applying to inject CO2 for the purpose of geologic storage to obtain a storage facility permit, a permit to drill, and a permit to operate prior to commencement of injection activities. The storage facility permit covers multiple design aspects such as technical evaluation, area-of-review delineation, a corrective action plan, an emergency and remedial response plan, a casing and cementing program, a testing and monitoring plan, a well-plugging plan, and a postinjection site care and facility closure plan. Draft plans are currently under development using existing regional data available and the recently acquired seismic survey results. The permit-to-drill application for a stratigraphic test hole was also prepared, submitted, and approved in December 2019. Results from the test hole will provide the necessary data to finalize the storage facility permit for submittal. Building CCS Support in North Dakota Through Outreach. Significant outreach activities for this rural North Dakota project have included two community open houses, presentations at local commission meetings, and maintaining up-to-date materials to communicate project information and progress. The first open house was organized and held in March 2019. About 30 community visitors were hosted, including participation by the EERC, RTE, and North Dakota permitting agents; feedback was generally positive and supportive for the project. RTE and the EERC also presented at county and city commission meetings several times throughout 2019. Outreach materials were prepared such as a RTE CCS fact sheet, Geophysical Survey FAQs and Sampling FAQs, and Geophysical Survey Results. A follow-up open house was conducted in December 2019. Next Steps in 2020: Drilling a Stratigraphic Test Hole. A next step in development toward implementation is to drill a stratigraphic test hole at the RTE site by summer 2020. The EERC will provide technical assistance to conduct reservoir characterization through analysis of collected core and interpretation of downhole tests from the drilling effort. Downhole monitoring technology will also be installed to begin collection of baseline data. These activities will generate the necessary scientific data for CO2 storage predictions and development of the numerous plans (e.g., monitoring, testing, reporting, etc.) required to finalize the first North Dakota Class VI Program permit application.

Innovation and instrumentation in CO2 monitoring wells for reservoir surveillance and advanced diagnostics

In 2015, CO2CRC Ltd embarked on an ambitious plan to field test innovative technologies to monitor a CO2 plume injected into a saline aquifer with a view to address many of the economic and environmental concerns frequently associated with commercial carbon capture and storage project’s long-term monitoring programs (Jenkins et al. 2017). It was called the Otway Stage 3 Project and it was focused on testing the technologies of seismic and downhole pressures applied in unique ways to monitor an injected plume of approximately 15000 tonnes as it developed and migrated in the subsurface. To achieve this goal, five new wells were drilled at CO2CRC’s Otway International Test Centre – one dedicated to injection (drilled in 2017) and the remaining four wells (drilled in 2019) were used for monitoring purposes. Each monitoring well and the gas injection well, were outfitted with fibre optic systems installed and cemented outside the casing (specifically for seismic monitoring) and with pressure gauges installed at the reservoir depth. The challenge of the installation was to install fibre optics outside of the casing, cement them in place securely and to perforate the wells without damaging the fragile TEF bundles. While the installation of the pressure gauges in the injection well was a conventional in-tubing gauge mandrel, the installation in the monitoring wells, which were to be used for water injection as well as pressure monitoring, used a less conventional deployment method, where the gauges were instead installed using a more economic and flexible approach by suspending the gauges from the wellhead via a hanger system. This not only ensured continuous offline monitoring of the downhole well pressures and temperatures, but also facilitated future well operations by simple wireline retrieval and deployment of the gauge, forgoing the need for a workover rig. The various systems were commissioned over the period of March–June 2020 and were in full operation in the second half of 2020 – all successfully operating and acquiring baseline data remotely as designed. The Stage 3 Project commenced gas injection operations in December 2020 and data acquisition using the innovative systems have commenced successfully.

Environmental Assessment of a Coal Power Plant with Carbon Dioxide Capture System Based on the Activated Carbon Adsorption Process: A Case Study of the Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is introducing new technological concepts for mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHG) in coal-based energy industries. One such technology, in power plants, is post combustion CO2 capture from flue gases by activated carbon adsorption. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was used as the assessment tool to determine the environmental impacts of the chosen technology. This article focuses on a comparative LCA case study on the technology of temperature-swing adsorption of CO2 from power plant flue gases, designed for the conditions of the Czech Republic. The LCA study compares the following two alternatives: (1) a reference power unit and (2) a reference power unit with CO2 adsorption. The most significant changes are observed in the categories of climate change potential, terrestrial acidification, and particulate matter formation. The adsorption process shows rather low environmental impacts, however, the extended LCA approach shows an increase in energy demands for the process and fossil depletion as a result of coal-based national energy mix. The feasibility of the study is completed by the preliminary economical calculation of the payback period for a commercial carbon capture unit.

Techno‐economic assessment of carbon capture, utilization and storage for coal‐fired power generation, and CO2‐enhanced oil recovery in the USA: an Ohio case study

AbstractThe economic feasibility of carbon dioxide (CO2) enhanced oil recovery (EOR) to offset CO2 capture costs from a coal‐fired power plant are evaluated for 36 source‐sink scenarios in Ohio; one of the top ten states for fossil‐fuel use and CO2 emissions in the United States. Six capture scenarios are examined for a representative 550 megawatt (MW) coal‐fired power plant, and three CO2‐EOR injection scenarios are evaluated for both East Canton oil field and Gore consolidated oil field. The potential costs and credits associated with CO2 storage related tax incentives are also considered. Power plant capture performance and costs integrated with field‐scale CO2‐EOR techno‐economics suggest that there are potentially feasible scenarios for capture, transport, and CO2‐EOR storage of 25%, 50%, and 90% of CO2 emissions, respectively, from a 550 MW power plant. Economically feasible outcomes exhibiting net present values of $2191, $1380, and $1940 million are estimated for the 25%, 50%, and 90% capture scenarios, respectively. On average, the 45Q tax credit for CO2 storage affords a $3–$7 per barrel decrease in the minimum oil price required to break‐even on the project. In all source‐sink scenarios qualifying as feasible, the CO2 capture costs incurred by the power plant are offset by revenue from CO2‐EOR and are not passed on to ratepayers during the 30‐year analysis time frame. The most economical outcome for supporting a commercial carbon capture, utilization, and storage project in Ohio is also identified, and the potential impact of CO2‐EOR operational strategy on source‐sink feasibility is discussed. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Simulated moving bed adsorption process based on a polyethylenimine-silica sorbent for CO2 capture with sensible heat recovery

A simulated moving bed (SMB) adsorption process with heat integration was numerically investigated and is proposed as a viable option for CO2 capture. An amine-functionalized silica sorbent, 0.37 EB-PEI, was used for the SMB process. The process was configured by directly converting a moving bed process; it consists of four separate stages with internal plate heat exchangers for adsorption, cooling, heating, and desorption. The proposed process was extended to the multi-bed scale for continuous capture of CO2 and full integration of the heat produced during the process. A dynamic simulator was constructed to analyze the process behavior, focusing on the energy demand under various operating conditions. As a result, the proposed SMB process was estimated to require 255 kWh/t-CO2 of energy up to CO2 liquefaction; this work reveals the potential of the SMB process for commercial carbon capture through further improvement of the sorbent material.

Cost competitive membrane—cryogenic post-combustion carbon capture

Recently it has been postulated that a post combustion capture process with three membrane stages and cryogenic separation can achieve high CO2 recovery and purity while being economically competitive with existing commercial carbon capture technology (Merkel et al., 2010). The advantage of this design is the use of burner feed air as a membrane sweep gas to ensure high CO2 recovery. However, this results in dilution of oxygen in the burner and reduces the overall efficiency of the power station. In this study, two modifications to this process are considered. First, to ensure that the feed burner air supply is not oxygen deficient, we consider the addition of a small air separation membrane unit on this feed air supply. The O2 enrichment design allows much greater CO2 concentrations to be accommodated within this burner air supply. The resulting capture cost of the optimised process is reduced to less than US$ 32 per tonne avoided, with a burner air supply containing 33mol% CO2. If flue gas desulphurisation and selective catalytic reduction are required then the cost of capture is less than US$ 43 per tonne avoided. However, one of the consequences of the oxygen enrichment is the need for four membrane stages which may limit its practical application. In comparison, a simplified process that removes the final CO2 membrane concentration while still achieving high CO2 recovery has increased energy demand and operating costs but results in lower overall capital cost. The cost of capture of this simplified process remains comparable at less than US$ 35 per tonne avoided for a sweep gas containing 9mol% CO2.

Corrosion Investigations In 2-ethanolamine Based Post- Combustion CO2 Capture Pilot Plants

Corrosion is an essential operational factor to characterize for future demonstration and commercial carbon capture plants. In this paper, three approaches have been used to investigate corrosion in CO2 capture pilot plants: corrosion coupons, on-line monitoring and pilot plant inspection. These tests were realized in two pilot plants: Esbjerg, Dong Energy and Maasvlakte, TNO. Consistent results were obtained. In general, carbon steel and austenitic stainless steel behave well in most of the zones. Several more critical zones have been identified: stripper sump, high temperature lean solvent pipe, reboiler and reclaimer. Some corrosion mechanisms such as flow induced degradation, corrosion due to CO2 or the corrosive effect of the solvent degradation have been evidenced.

A standardized Approach to Multi-criteria Assessment of CCS Chains

For a commercial Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) chain to be successful, it must satisfy a whole range of requirements: technical, economic, environmental, safety, and societal. A comprehensive, understandable and reproducible assessment of CCS projects is a complex task due to several reasons: wide range of actors and factors involved, substantial differences in the type and nature of both actors and factors, and numerous associated uncertainties. In this paper, a standardised methodology is described and illustrated on a few examples of relatively simple case studies. The proposed methodology provides means and tools for evaluation of several economic, environmental, and in the future also risk associated criteria and thereby enables selection of the most promising options for CCS. The methodology will also help to reduce the uncertainty by improving understanding of the most important dependencies and trends for the investigated key performance indicators as enlightened by the case studies examples. It could also help to design efficient incentives and measures to stimulate realization of CCS by identifying and evaluating the most important non-technical factors affecting the CCS chain viability.

Towards commercial application of a second-generation post-combustion capture technology — Pilot plant validation of the siemens capture process and implementation of a first demonstration case

Abstract The performance of post-combustion CO 2 capture processes depends on the applied solvent as well as on the chosen process configuration and the integration concept with the power plant. Siemens bases its development efforts on an amino-acid salt solution as solvent, which has a negligible environmental impact and provides favourable properties for a low-energy capture process. The solvent features a high chemical and thermal stability and is easy to handle. The capture process is characterized by near-zero emissions. As a first step for validation of the determined solvent and process features on an industrial scale, the implementation of the capture process in a pilot plant is required. For this purpose, Siemens has installed a pilot plant at E.ON’s coal-fired power plant Staudinger in Germany and started the operation in August 2009. The measured pilot plant process data are used to validate the computational process model, which refines the model accuracy and improves the reliability in terms of plant performance. The findings from pilot plant operation confirmed that an overall net plant efficiency penalty of less than six percentage points (without CO 2 compression) for a state-of-the-art coal-fired steam power plant can be achieved. The paper also presents experiences from pilot plant measuring campaigns with regard to the impact of trace components such as SO x and NO x . Solvent losses due to related degradation effects can be minimized by an intelligent reclaiming concept. Loss due to oxygen degradation can be estimated to be less than one percent of hold-up per year. Suitable construction materials have been qualified. The results of the pilot plant operation will serve as basis for the implementation of a demonstration plant, which will be the final step before a full-scale commercial carbon capture plant project. Siemens has been selected as technology provider for the Meri-Pori Carbon Capture and Storage project in Finland, which is a potential funding candidate of the European Flagship Programme. The Meri-Pori power plant has an installed capacity of 565 MW and the capture demonstration project is supposed to treat half of the power plant’s flue gas and to capture 90% CO 2 from the treated flue gas. In addition to the Siemens capture process, the demonstration project will include ship transportation and geological storage.

Unconventional oil and gas resources and the geological storage of carbon dioxide: overview

Abstract The ‘Unconventional oil and gas resources and the geological storage of carbon dioxide’ section of the Proceedings is designed to provide new insights from recent research and exploitation within these major growth areas in applied geology. Research and innovation on unconventional oil and gas have been driven by market needs – specifically concerns over oil and gas supply – as well as technological development. A cross-section of this work is highlighted in the current set of papers, covering ultra-heavy oil, shale oil, shale gas, basin-centred gas, tight gas and clathrates. Unsurprisingly, much of this research has been pioneered in North America. This work is complemented herein by some initial studies from Europe. Similarly, the geological storage of CO 2 is not simply a story of technological advance but also a response to an urgent societal imperative. Carbon dioxide sequestration is recognized as an important method for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the near future, and is expected to have growing relevance to the oil and gas industry and the energy sector. Recent findings from current commercial carbon capture and storage projects in the North Sea and North Africa are presented and are complemented by an overview of major research programmes established in North America.