High-efficiency Post Combustion Carbon Capture System

PCI’s innovation is a compact, modular Post Combustion Carbon Capture System (PCCCS) utilizing high internal volume nanosorbents for carbon capture, supported on a tailorable substrate. Our system enables low pressure drop, high volumetric utilization and high mass transfer, and is suitable for the rapid heat transfer and low temperature swing regeneration operating modes needed for cost-effective carbon capture. Capital and operating costs are reduced based on lowered energy demand. Our approach to regenerable CO2 capture eliminates close to 90% of the energy cost required for operation of methylethanolamine (MEA) based systems. In Phase I this approach has been proof-of concept demonstrated at the laboratory level. Our work also included an economic model for integration with a coal-fired power plant that demonstrated our approach can meet the DOE cost-goals related to effective carbon-capture. Our primary benefit will be a new technology for substantially reducing the cost of CO2 capture, offering energy savings and economic advantage to industries that may need to reduce carbon emissions. Worldwide, carbon emissions are forecasted to grow dramatically, with fossil fuel combustion and industry accounting for substantial CO2 emissions and with competing industries and economies worldwide seeking to reduce carbon emissions. Carbon capture technologies provide a path to reduce net carbon emissions while also supplying CO2 for integration with value-added chains of several industries, including enhanced oil recovery and an emerging industry of converting CO2 to value added chemicals such as fuels and plastics. Technologies that capture CO2 emissions at lower cost offer potential for American global economic advantage and energy independence, both for domestic industries that save energy using the technology and as the basis for export products that deliver the technology to others. Phase II work will build on the Phase I success to further develop and optimize our sorbent and substrate properties, demonstrate performance and durability testing with coal-derived flue gas, and produce a refined techno-economic analysis model based on CFD and process modeling and a fully integrated economic analysis including balance of plant components. Our product’s essential value proposition is that it enables lower cost post-combustion carbon capture, with potential for further cost reductions with further technology development, experience and scale. The critical need it will fulfill is to provide carbon capture at lower cost than other technologies, offering energy savings and economic advantage to industries and plants that need to actually remove carbon emissions from their post-combustion exhaust.