Post-combustion carbon capture technologies: Energetic analysis and life cycle assessment

Abstract

An integrated framework focusing on the energetic analysis and environmental impacts of a CO2 capture and storage (CCS) system is presented, in which the process simulation method and the life cycle assessment (LCA) method are integrated and applied to the CCS value chain.Three scenarios for carbon capture from post-combustion power plant -an MEA-based system, a gas separation membrane process and a hybrid membrane-cryogenic process are studied. The energy efficiency of power plant and the specific capture energy consumption for each scenario are estimated from process simulation. The environmental impacts for each scenario and the base case without CCS are assessed with LCA method. The results show that the MEA-based capture system faces the challenges of higher energy consumption, and higher environmental impact caused by solvent degradation and emissions compared to gas membrane separation processes. The hybrid membrane-cryogenic process shows a better environmental potential for CO2 capture from flue gases due to much lower power consumption and relatively lower environmental impacts.

Life cycle carbon efficiency of Direct Air Capture systems with strong hydroxide sorbents

“…Because fossil fuels are expected to remain the main energy source in the coming decades (International Energy Agency 2016), methods to capture and store CO 2 are considered important to achieve the climate targets. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) at large industrial point source emission sites may help reduce emissions (Metz et al 2005, Kenarsari et al 2013, Volkart et al 2013, Zhang et al 2014, Leeson et al 2017. However, industrial sources are currently estimated to be responsible for about 36% of the GHG emissions (IPCC 2014).…”

Experimental Evaluation of the Efficiency of Membrane Cascades Type of “Continuous Membrane Column” in the Carbon Dioxide Capture Applications

“…At present, the main traditionally applied approach to the capture of carbon dioxide is the postcombustion capture of CO 2 from flue gas of thermal power plants by chemical absorption using amines (amine scrubbing) [2]. However, despite the fact that this approach has demonstrated its effectiveness and is used in the processes of carbon dioxide removal from gas systems with a low content of the target component [3], this technology is characterized by a number of serious drawbacks [4] including high energy costs, corrosion of pipelines and equipment, high investment costs, loss of absorbent solution due to its degradation, and potential environmental hazards. In addition, as noted in a number of works, the amine scrubbing system used to capture 90% CO 2 in flue gas would require about 30% of the energy produced by the CHP plant so that the cost of CO 2 capture would be $ 40-100/t CO 2 , thereby leading to a significant increase in the cost of electricity generated by this plant by 50-90% [5,6].…”

Mitigation Life Cycle Assessment: Best Practices from LCA of Energy and Water Infrastructure That Incurs Impacts to Mitigate Harm

“…This ability to compare the environmental intensity of different mitigation activities directly allows analysts to select the most environmentally efficient approach to mitigation or benchmark performance, sometimes even comparing across different economic sectors or applications [44], to judge the value of a particular approach or project. Conducting comparative LCA that evaluates multiple options for achieving a given, harmonized objective is a common strategy in LCA and can be particularly informative as a method of evaluating the environmental performance of mitigation infrastructure [50][51][52]. Although the use of a functional unit based on the output of the harm-causing product system (e.g., electricity, for CCS) would appear to also enable this comparability and more, due to its greater compatibility with more traditional objects of LCA analysis, results using this approach can be confusing because mitigation infrastructure is likely more a consumer than a producer of these outputs ( Figure 2).…”