Postcombustion CO2 Capture: A Comparative Techno-Economic Assessment of Three Technologies Using a Solvent, an Adsorbent, and a Membrane

By S. Zanco, José-Francisco Pérez-Calvo, Antonio Gasós, Beatrice Cordiano, Viola Becattini, M. Mazzotti. ACS Engineering Au, 2021

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: This work compares three postcombustion CO 2 capture processes based on mature technologies for CO 2 separation, namely, (i) absorption using an aqueous piperazine solution, (ii) adsorption using Zeolite 13X in conventional ﬁ xed beds (either vacuum swing adsorption or temperature swing adsorption), and (iii) multistage membrane separation using a polymeric material (with CO 2 /N 2 selectivity of 50 and permeability for CO 2 of 1700 GPU). All three capture plants are assumed to be retro ﬁ tted to a generic industrial CO 2 - emitting source with 12% CO 2 v/v (with 95% relative humidity at the inlet temperature and pressure of 30 ° C and 1.3 bar, respectively) to deliver CO 2 at 96% purity. In the cases of adsorption and membranes, the ﬂ ue gas is dried before feeding it to the CO 2 capture unit. In a ﬁ rst step, the capture processes (i.e., components and design parameters) are optimized based on their technical performance, de ﬁ ned through process exergy requirement and plant productivity; exergy − productivity Pareto fronts are computed for varying CO 2 recovery rates. Second, the economic performance of the processes is assessed through a cost analysis. Estimates of CO 2 capture costs are provided for each process as a function of the plant size and CO 2 recovery rate. The comparative assessment shows that, although the adsorption-and membrane-based processes analyzed may become cost competitive at the small scale (i.e., below sizes of 100 tons of ﬂ ue gas processed per day) and low recovery rates (i.e., below ca. 40%), the absorption-based process considered is the most cost-e ﬀ ective option at most plant sizes and

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

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