Low Cost CO2 Capture: Dream or Reality?

Carbon capture and Storage is one of the major pathways to reduce carbon dioxide emission. Over the years, the success of this technology has been relatively limited. Reasons for this include lack of acceptance of storage, but also a lack of economic feasibility. In many cases, projects need to be funded through subsidies or are justified on the basis of use for enhanced oil recovery. Meanwhile an enormous effort has been placed into lowering the cost of capture. Many R&D programs have set the target to reduce cost from typically 50 $/ton to 25 $/ton, while even now this kind of reductions have not been realized, to the contrary there has been an increase in reported cost. This paper addresses the background of the situation. It gives a literature overview of different technologies and the associated cost. A cost analysis is made of the different components in a CO2 capture plant. Comparison is made for the different technologies for post, pre- and oxy-combustion. The reasons for the high cost is analyzed and it is shown that no silver bullets exist. Several smart technologies are currently in development and the latest insights are given in how these technologies can reduce cost. A few studies are given that show why these technologies could not fulfill the initial expectations. The results show that there is a tendency that advantages of technology solutions are often off-set by disadvantages that are not foreseen at the early Research stages, often because the new systems are more complicated than the state-of-the-art. This includes engineering cost for mitigate these dis advantages. An example is the use of smart solvents with phase change involved. This process may lead to lower OPEX due to lower energy consumption, but cost is increased by the higher cost for doing the separation or for keeping the solvents from leaving the solvent.