Abstract
Carbon capture (CC), along with the efforts to reduce carbon emissions at the source, is a major action toward the mitigation of climate change and global warming due to emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Carbon emissions amount to 36.3 Gt-CO2 in 2021 from 31.5 Gt-CO2 in 2022, with a drop of about 1.5 Gt-CO2 in 2020 relative to 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The carbon emissions originate from heat and power, transportation, process industries, and residential activities constitute 47.7, 24.9, 18.9, and 8.5% of the total emissions, respectively. The process industries represent the second large-scale point-source of carbon emissions next to heat and power. Additionally, the process industries have high-intensity carbon emissions up to 0.6–0.8 t-CO2/t-cement, 1.4–2 t-CO2/t-steel, and 2.7–99.2 kg CO2/bbl, with flue gas streams having high CO2 concentration up to 30%. In comparison to 0.4 t-CO2/MWh and 3–16% CO2 in the flue gas from heat and power facilities, these process industries present a highly effective target for CC application. This work reviews and critically discusses the large-scale application of CC to different process industries, namely, cement, iron and steel, oil refinery, and chemicals. CC can be achieved by three main approaches, i.e., post-combustion, pre-combustion, and oxyfuel combustion. Post-combustion and chemical-looping are the common CC approaches utilized in process industries, with the first being widely applied due to its ease of incorporation, and the latter is commonly used in the cement industry. CC with the capacity in the range of 0.4–2 Mt-CO2/yr is planned for cement plants relative to current capacities of 75 kt-CO2/yr. Similarly, CC capacity up to 0.8 Mt-CO2/yr has been integrated into iron and steel plants, in which captured CO2 is utilized for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) applications. In the oil and gas industry, CC has been widely utilized, in the context of gas purification, being an essential gas processing unit, with CC capacities up to 1.4 Mt-CO2/yr, and plans to reach 4 Mt-CO2/yr. CC cost is the main challenge for the widespread implementation of CC in process industries with a wide range of reported costs of USD9.8-250/t-CO2 depending on the process industry and the CC technology used.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 132300 |
| Journal | Journal of Cleaner Production |
| Volume | 362 |
| Early online date | 21 May 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 15 Aug 2022 |
Funding
In the post-combustion typical amine process can be easily used as widely applied in oil and gas processing (Kuramochi et al., 2012; Laribi et al., 2019). The largest demonstration plant for amine process CC in the cement industry has been constructed at the Baimashan Cement plant of the Anhui Conch Group in Wuhu, Anhui province, China in late 2017 with a CC capacity of 50 kt-CO2/yr (Institute, 2018). The giant cement manufacturer HeidelbergCement Group has got the required approval and funds in December 2020 to construct the first full-scale CCS facility at the group's NORCEM cement plant in Brevik, Norway[65][65]. The plant will capture about 400 kt-CO2/yr, utilizing typical amine absorption post-combustion CC, cutting about 50% of the plants' carbon emissions (Guth, 2021). The plant is part of the group's ambitious plan to reduce overall carbon emissions by 30% as compared to 1990 by 2025. The same group, i.e. HeidelbergCement Group, has announced recently to construct similar CCS facilities at the group's cement plant at Slite, Gotland Island, Sweden, which is responsible for about 3% of Sweden's carbon emissions, to capture 1.8 Mt-CO2/yr as the first carbon-neutral cement plant worldwide (Beumelburg, 2021). Similarly, Dalmia Cement (Bharat) Ltd. in cooperation with Carbon Clean Solutions has announced the plans to construct 0.5 Mt-CO2/yr CC with CO2 utilized in nearby businesses, helping the plant to become zero-carbon, and then carbon-negative by 2040 (Institute, 2019).Garcia and Berghout have compressively reviewed the methodologies followed for estimating the cost of CC in the industrial sector with a focus on cement and iron and steel processes (Garcia and Berghout, 2019). They indicated that different CC assessment methodology is being applied in different works, which makes it hard to perform a fair comparison among different cost estimates. Finally, the authors have provided a list of essential economic and technical data and information that has to be clearly communicated and streamlined to better compare among different CC cost assessments.The high cost of CC currently requires huge governmental support in the forms of carbon tax and incentives, hence enabling CC on a large scale. Additionally, more R&D efforts are required to innovate high-efficiency, low-energy, and low-cost CC processes utilizing cheap and available material at much less energy requirements. Different policies have proposed many inventive types to help with the high CC cost such as tax credit (including tax exemption, break, and incentive), carbon price, direct CC cost subsidy rate, and emission reduction fund (Abdul Manaf et al., 2019; Santibanez-Gonzalez, 2017). Waxman et al. have estimated that the application of CCUS tax incentives under section 45Q through 2026 could justify CC capacity of 3.3–77.6 Mt-CO2/yr in the Gulf of Mexico region, the USA as a major cluster for oil production and refinery as well as power generation (Waxman et al., 2021). Oda and Keigo performed a preliminary study on the effect of two different policy mix on the economic viability of CC in the steel making process (Oda and Akimoto, 2017). One policy mix considered a tax credit of USD2007 35/t-CO2, while the other considered USD2007 5/t-CO2 and one-half subsidy rate for CAPEX and OPEX, along with loan guarantee and carbon price for both. The results have shown that the subsidy effect is sensitive to carbon prices, while the tax credit is sensitive to the firm's capacity factor, i.e. pre-tax profit.
Keywords
- Carbon capture
- Cement
- Iron and steel
- Oil refinery
- Oxyfuel-combustion
- Post-combustion