Membrane-Based Carbon Capture System for Long-Range Marine Transportation

Long-range marine transportation is crucial for international trade and the world economy. The carbon dioxide (CO2) released from this industry represents about 2-3% of global man-made CO2 emissions. Decarbonizing long-range marine transportation is challenging due to the requirements for space and weight, on-board CO2 storage, and variable exhaust conditions. It is therefore necessary to evaluate the feasibility of existing technologies and develop new technologies for the decarbonization of long-range marine transportation. The proposed project will conduct a conceptual design and a feasibility study of an onboard CO2 capture and storage system that is based on a new generation of polymeric CO2-removal membranes. The proposed system will utilize the new generation of high-performance CO2-removal membranes to capture CO2 from ship engine exhaust, and store captured CO2 onboard. Due to the high performance of the membranes, the proposed system is compact in size and easy to integrate with existing ship engines, making it well-suited for long-range marine transportation. By using the existing conventional engines of the ship, the proposed system would be affordable. As a part of the evaluation process, the proposed design will be compared with two alternative approaches: (a) an onboard amine scrubbing system with storage for captured CO2; and (b) a new propulsion system based on hydrogen fuel cells and onboard hydrogen storage. The side-by-side comparison with alternative approaches can help the shipping industry examine more possible pathways and available technologies to achieve the International Maritime Organizationĺs deep decarbonization targets by 2050. Our proposed project plan in Phase I includes: (1) conducting a feasibility study and a conceptual design of an onboard carbon capture and storage system that could reduce 95% of CO2, 90% of NOx, and 99% of SOx emissions emitted from a Panamax class container ship using heavy fuel oil as fuel; (2) comparing our conceptual design with two alternative designs: an onboard carbon capture and storage system based on amine-scrubbing, and a new propulsion system based on hydrogen fuel cells and onboard hydrogen storage; (3) conducting a technology gap analysis and CO2 membrane testing; and (4) conducting a detailed life cycle analysis and a technoeconomic analysis of the proposed process. In Phase II, we plan to build and test a prototype of the CO2-capture and storage system, and optimize the proposed system based on the trials of the prototype and customer feedback.