ICAP

CCS (CarbonCapture and Storage) is a cornerstone in the struggle for climate change abatement. The main obstacles to worldwide use of CCS are the energy required to capture CO₂, creating a large energy efficiency loss, and the capital costs involved. The current financial situation makes it even more crucial to focus on energy efficiency penalty, and capital cost reduction. For post-combustion CO₂ capture from fossil fuel based power plants, the single main bottleneck that causes a significant reduction in plant efficiency and prevents cost effectiveness, is the low flue gas CO₂ partial pressure, 3.5-15 kPa. This limits membrane fluxes, solvent capacity, solvent selection and increases energy requirements. In pre-combustion CO₂ capture, key bottlenecks are the number of processing steps, the possible low hydrogen pressure, and the high hydrogen fraction in the fuel. Also, global deployment of CO₂ capture technologies is restrained by the general need for prior removal of SO₂.

The European ZEP Technology Platform has a priority list of where research is needed in CO₂ capture. The iCap project addresses a selection of these areas that we find to be the most important and promising with regard to improved energy efficiency and overall capture cost reduction. Our postulate is that by addressing a selected range of the most important bottlenecks, we can by each both reduce capital cost and improve energy efficiency, and achieve an accumulated impact gain of a 40-45% reduction in the loss in power plant cost efficiency. iCap targets capital cost reductions of 30-40% and a reduction in thermal and electrical energy use by 45% through process intensification by the combined SO₂ and CO₂ capture, by increased capacity phase change solvents, by elevated pressure desorption, by employing high flux membranes, and by new cycles and better integration with the power production process.

iCap seeks to remove the barriers for world wide CO₂ capture deployment by developing new technologies with potential for :

• Reducing the current energy penalty to 4-5% points in power plant efficiency by introducing a new breed of solvents based on phase change.
• To combine SO₂ and CO₂ removal, thereby introducing process intensification, reducing capital cost, and energy requirements.
• Make low temperature membranes feasible for post-combustion processes, thereby creating a solvent free alternative.
• Develop new power cycles that enable high pressure/high temperature post combustion membrane CO₂ capture
• Reduce the avoidance cost to 15€/tonne CO₂.

Head of project: Assoc. Prof. Nicolas von Solms, nvs@kt.dtu.dk

WP leader: Assoc. Prof. Kaj Thomsen, kth@kt.dtu.dk

Former PhD: Peter Jørgensen Herslund

PhD: Waseem Arshad, mwa@kt.dtu.dk