Process Intensifcation for Carbon Capture

The potential impact of climate change on society has led to concern over emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, by a large number aging coal fired power plants. However, upgrading to cleaner natural gas fueled power plants is an expensive proposition and current methods to remove carbon from the flue gas streams of coal-fired power plants have proven costly. Currently, coal power provides the majority of electric power to the United States, while also representing the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses. Innovative solutions are required to bring the aging fleet of coal-fired plants to the emissions levels of power from natural gas, while remaining cost competitive with these technologies. If carbon emissions could be greatly reduced from coal fired power plants, at low cost, this would represent a significant contribution to improving air and water quality, and the Department of Energy goals of reducing capital costs of plant upgrades, and enabling affordable capture would be supported. The Proposer has developed an innovative process and novel and low cost component designs for capture of carbon from the flue gas streams of coal fired power plants. The Prime Contractor will design the process for integration into the existing infrastructure. The proposed development will integrate sorbents coated on a low-cost monolith heat exchanger with existing unit operations in an integrated gasification combined cycle power plant to combine carbon capture equipment with existing equipment. The proposed effort aims to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of the proposed process. During the effort, the Proposer will design and test carbon dioxide absorbers, utilizing the Subcontractor-developed and optimized sorbents. An analysis will be conducted to qualify the process design and absorber performance results. These test results and analysis will demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of the system process and components. By enabling the production of monolith reactors at low cost and integrating carbon capture with existing unit operations, it will be more economical to capture carbon from coal-fired power plants. These advances will result in a lowering of the capital and operating costs for upgraded coal-fired power plants and result in the subsequent reduction in the cost of electricity to ratepayers, and make investment in carbon-capture technology more attractive. These cost reduction benefits also apply to the development of monolith reactors for highly endothermic reactions. This development approach has already been applied to the steam reforming of military logistics jet fuel for fuel cell applications. This effort and benefits are also applicable to reducing the costs associated with the hydrogen generation unit needed for the hydrodeoxygenation and hydrocracking of bio oil, produced from fast pyrolysis units.