Introduction

Post combustion capture technology will be the one of the potential CO2 capture technologies that will be applied at large scale in the power generation in the future in order to reduce CO2 emission. The cost and performance of post combustion capture technology for coal and natural gas power plants is still high around 58 and 80 USD/tonneCO2 avoided respectively, IEA 2011.

Recommendations

When considering the improvement related to the amine based solvent properties it is important to identify the relationship between different solvent properties. Hence, changes should be made to a combination of solvent properties for a more realistic approach. One of the draw backs from the work performed by Lucquiaud et al. 2012 is that the solvent property changes evaluated were independent of each other. Therefore, IEAGHG recommends further work in this area, where a rate based model is developed for a solvent based CO2 absorption process and a combination of expected solvent properties improvements is evaluated. With regard to the process heat integration improvements, IEAGHG has commissioned a study in this area, where evaluation of different solvent based post combustion capture process heat integration on similar solvent and process conditions will be performed.

Other process improvements such as improvement in equipment size (heat exchanger, compressor), improved column packing material and low cost construction material should be looked into in further detail when considering the future upgrade of a CO2 post combustion capture process. Furthermore the CO2 capture plant lifetime costs of various combinations of improvements should be evaluated. An increase in CO2 capture percentage should be evaluated further on its feasibility and cost of retrofitting to an existing plant. Other emerging 2nd and 3rd generation CO2 post combustion capture technologies such as multi-phase solvent or phase exchange solvents, ionic liquids, solid sorbents, membrane technology etc. should be evaluated on the basis of their feasibility of retrofitting and impact on the cost of an existing CO2 post combustion capture plant.

Regarding the analysis of a financial value for an option of an upgrade, a dynamic model shall be used in future where operational flexibility of the power plant is incorporated.