Introduction

Several government and international organisations have set 2020 as a target for commercial deployment of CCS. In order to keep this target, it is clear that the initial CCS demonstration projects and full scale CO₂ capture plants will have to be based on currently available technologies. These commitments and agreed targets give an important role for the solvent based post-combustion capture technology, which is considered to be the most mature of all the capture technologies available today. This technology provides a retrofit possibility and is already available on relatively small industrial scale; this makes it one of the most viable options for large scale CCS deployment.

However, the conventional solvent based post-combustion CO₂ capture technology are facing a number of challenges, which need to be addressed before full scale deployment. Major challenges are related to the high energy requirement, high capture cost and the uncertainties of the environmental impact from the capture technology and very important the challenge related to the scale. Therefore, IEAGHG has commissioned this study to define the different technical challenges associated to the conventional post-combustion capture technology with a special focus on those risks related to scale-up and full scale operational requirements.

Key Messages

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• Scale up of CO2 post combustion capture process is possible without significant development and cost. Although process performance could be improved further by additional research and development identified from this study.

• Process integration and improved amine based solvent formulations will help in reducing the energy requirement for the post combustion capture process.

• Focus should be given on improving the amine based solvents on their CO2 absorption rate, CO2 absorption capacity, reduction in sensible heat requirement for solvent regeneration and waste generation.

• Further work should be performed on improving process equipment (e.g. heat exchangers), process heat integration and operational flexibility of the process.

• IEAGHG would like to encourage equipment developers and suppliers to have improved interaction to address issues identified
• in this study.