The Importance of Tailoring Carbon Capture Design to Optimize Plant Capex and Improve System Efficiency

Abstract

The necessity to reduce the environmental impact of industrial production sites in the recent years has accelerated the decarbonization strategies of many companies and the possibility to install Post-Combustion Carbon Capture units in new or existing assets has become one of the key elements to achieve the target to minimize plants carbon footprint.In the installation of such units, it is possible to identify multiple technical solutions that would tailor the implementation of the Carbon Capture unit by optimizing the number of equipment and increase the system efficiency, minimizing the relevant OpEx.The capability to manage the peculiarities of the specific industry and the criticalities of existing plants would lead to better designed solutions. Two case studies are presented relevant to different technical installations, specifically the Amine Post Combustion Carbon Capture for a Steam Reformer and a Power Generation plant.The necessity to reduce the flue gas inlet temperature to Carbon Capture unit offers the possibility to improve the heat recovery within the system, therefore increasing the overall efficiency; at the same time a clear identification of the key emission points can provide room to integrate different units, using the same absorption equipment or a single regeneration loop.The wide range of Carbon Dioxide concentrations that characterizes the different post-Combustion services (i.e. from Reforming to Gasification) shall be combined with the possible presence of critical contaminants, therefore requiring dedicated optimizations that will be described and analyzed in the present paper.