Advancing Post-Combustion CO₂ Capture through Increased Mass Transfer and Lower Degradation

Technical Report · Fri Dec 23 04:00:00 EST 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1906480· OSTI ID:1906480

Thompson, Jesse ^[1]; Sarma, Moushumi ^[2]; Xiao, Min ^[2]; Bhatnagar, Saloni ^[2]; Abad, Keemia ^[2]; Liu, Kunlei ^[2]

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1. Univ. of Kentucky, Lexington, KY (United States); University of Kentucky
2. Univ. of Kentucky, Lexington, KY (United States)

The over-arching goal of the proposed project is to develop three techniques to enable aqueous post-combustion CO₂ capture technologies to meet the DOE performance and cost targets of 90% CO₂ capture, 95% purity, at a cost of less than $30/tonne CO₂ captured. This will be accomplished by the development of materials and processes to increase mass transfer in the absorber and reduce the environmental impacts. While constantly working to reduce the cost of CO₂ capture via solvent development and process & heat integration, increasing CO₂ mass transfer through development of custom dynamic packing materials and tuning solvent physical properties may offer a route to increased solvent capacity, lower energy consumption and reduced aerosol formation. The environmental concerns that have been identified in amine-based CO₂ capture systems, nitrosamines specifically, are another critical element that will be addressed in this project. The specific objectives of the project were to: 1) conduct detailed studies to understand how solvent physical properties and aerosol formation are impacted by additives; 2) quantify the CO₂ mass transfer improvement from the dynamic polarity packing in the absorber and the additive-modified solvent using the existing UK bench-scale CO₂ capture unit; 3) quantify the energy consumption savings associated with enhanced mass transfer; 4) quantify the benefits of the UK’s electrochemical cell to decompose nitrosamines; and 5) collect the necessary information/data to conduct a high-level TEA assessment of the proposed technologies. The project involved the fabrication and installation of customized dynamic polarity packing and an investigation into the understanding of the impact of chemical additives on solvent properties to increase CO₂ mass transfer in the absorber column, and lastly the design of an electrochemical cell to decompose nitrosamines in a water wash. After both systems were fabricated, they were tested at UK facilities, including on the bench-scale CO₂ capture unit under parametric and long-term operation.

• Research Organization: Univ. of Kentucky, Lexington, KY (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE)
• DOE Contract Number: FE0031661
• OSTI ID: 1906480
• Report Number(s): DOE-UK-31661
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES
CO2 Capture
Nitrosamine