2008 NIChE Carbon Capture and Sequestration Conference Speakers and Presentations

SESSION 1 - Overview of the technical, economic, and political landscape
SESSION 2 - Carbon Dioxide Capture
SESSION 3 - Carbon Dioxide Sequestration

 

SESSION 1- Overview of the technical, economic, and political landscape

• SPEAKER: Jim Dooley
  AFFILIATION: Joint Global Change Research Institute (U-Md and PNNL)
  TITLE: Overview of Selected Issues Associated with the Potential for Large Scale Commercial Deployment of Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage Technologies
  ABSTRACT: Jim Dooley (JGCRI) will provide an overview of the magnitude of the required transformation of the global energy (and therefore economic) system needed to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases as required by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (Engineered) carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) in deep geologic reservoirs can be play an important role in a broad portfolio of advanced energy technologies and policies designed to stabilize GHG concentrations at least cost. Jim Dooley will discuss the current state of CCS deployment around the world, the current status of the collection of technologies that make up a CCS system, and the challenges that need to be overcome to allow CCS to deploy at a much larger scale in a safe and effective manner. Particular attention will be paid to the potential for CCS deployment within the United States.
   
• SPEAKERS: Kenneth J. Ostrowski and Anton Derkach
  AFFILIATION: McKinsey and Company
  TITLE: Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What Cost?

  ABSTRACT: Consensus is growing among scientists, policy makers, and business leaders that concerted action will be needed to address rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States. The discussion is now turning to the practical challenges of where and how emissions reductions can best be achieved, at what costs, and over what periods of time.

• SPEAKER: Daniel P. Connell
  AFFILIATION: CONSOL Energy R&D
  TITLE: An Assessment of Candidate Technologies for Capturing Carbon Dioxide from Large Point Sources

  ABSTRACT: As part of the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP), CONSOL Energy Inc. Research & Development completed an extensive review of candidate technologies for capturing CO₂ emissions from large point sources, including power plants, iron and steel facilities, refineries, cement plants, gas processing plants, and various types of chemical plants. The objectives of this effort were to identify and evaluate commercially-available and emerging candidate technologies for capturing CO₂ from flue gas and process streams and to assess how these candidate technologies might be most economically matched to the wide diversity of CO₂ point sources in the MRCSP region.

  This presentation draws on the work described above to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of CO₂ capture technologies. CO₂ capture can be accomplished via a number of technologies, including processes based on wet chemical absorption, physical absorption, membrane separation, physical adsorption, solid chemical absorption, hydrate formation, electrochemical separation, and biochemical separation. The advantages, limitations, applicability, and commercial or developmental status of these technologies are discussed. It is technically feasible to capture CO2 from all of the types of point sources identified above using commercially available or near-commercial technologies; however, the costs of capture are unattractive for many point sources, and the available technologies would have to be applied in new ways and at an unprecedented scale in order to affect widespread CO₂ capture. These challenges are explored.

  Particular focus is given to CO₂ capture from coal-fired power plants, because these plants account for about 33% of the total CO₂ emissions in the United States – more than the combined emissions from all other large point sources. CO₂ capture options for coal-fired plants include post-combustion capture (e.g., using amine or ammonia scrubbing to treat the flue gas from a pulverized coal (PC) plant), pre-combustion capture (e.g., using a physical absorption process to treat the synthesis gas in an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant), and oxy-combustion (i.e., combusting coal in pure oxygen and recycled CO₂). Pilot- and/or commercial-scale demonstrations of these configurations are in various stages of development; a realistic timeframe for commercial deployment of these technologies is proposed. However, widespread deployment of CO₂ capture using today’s best available technologies would have a substantial impact on the nation’s economy and energy supply. Retrofitting a coal-fired power plant with amine scrubbing for 90% CO₂ capture can triple its cost of producing electricity and decrease its net electrical output by 30%. A new IGCC plant with CO₂ capture can have 50-100% greater capital costs and ≥60% greater cost of producing electricity than a new supercritical PC plant without CO₂ capture. Hence, there is a strong need for the continued development of technologies that have potential to reduce the costs and energy requirements associated with CO2 capture.

 (Top of page)
 

SESSION II: Carbon Dioxide Capture

• SPEAKER: W.S. Winston Ho
  AFFILIATION: The Ohio State University
  TITLE: Carbon Dioxide-Selective Membranes and Carbon Capture
  ABSTRACT: We have synthesized new membranes for the removal of carbon dioxide from gas mixtures by incorporating amino groups into polymer networks. The membranes are selective to carbon dioxide preferentially versus hydrogen and nitrogen since the acid gas permeates through the amine-containing membranes via the facilitated transport mechanism due to its reversible reaction with the amine; however, hydrogen and nitrogen are rejected by the membrane due to absence of reaction with the amine. The membranes synthesized have shown high carbon dioxide permeability and selectivity vs. hydrogen, carbon monoxide or nitrogen. This type of membranes may find applications in hydrogen purification for environmentally friendly fuel cells and in other carbon dioxide separations, allowing carbon dioxide capture for the greenhouse gas sequestration. The hydrogen purification includes the use of the membrane in the membrane reactor configuration to enhance water gas shift (WGS) reaction. Results from WGS membrane reactor experiments have shown carbon monoxide conversion/reduction to 10 ppm as well as significant hydrogen enhancement via carbon dioxide removal. The data have been in good agreement with modeling prediction. The carbon dioxide captured on the permeate side had a dry concentration of greater than 98% by using steam as the sweep gas. Similar carbon dioxide concentration was obtained from nitrogen-containing gas. In addition, hydrogen sulfide has a much higher reaction rate with the amine than carbon dioxide as the former reacts with the amine via proton transfer and the latter reacts with the amine via carbamate formation primarily. Thus, hydrogen sulfide can permeate through the membrane much faster than carbon dioxide. Our initial experiments with a limited membrane area have shown a nearly complete removal of hydrogen sulfide from 50 ppm in the synthesis gas feed to about 10 ppb in the hydrogen product, which is good for fuel cell applications.
   

• SPEAKER: Joan F. Brennecke
  AFFILIATION: Notre Dame University
  TITLE: The Future of Carbon Dioxide Capture with Absorbents
  ABSTRACT: CO₂ can be removed from natural or synthetic gas streams, where the CO₂ partial pressure is relatively high, using physical absorption with a proprietary mixture of ether compounds (UOP’s SelexolTM process) or chilled methanol (Lurgi’s RectisolTM process). If the CO₂ partial pressure is lower, as in the case for post-combustion flue gas, one can use chemical absorption, typically involving alkanolamine solvents. Amine-based separation of acid gases is a well-established technology, but requires too large an expenditure of energy to regenerate the solvent to be feasible for large-scale CO₂ separation from flue gas. Sterically hindered amines like 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol (AMP) or 2-piperidineethanol (PE) can reduce these costs somewhat.
  
  Here we will discuss two recent developments in the use of absorbents for CO₂ capture. First, Alstom is working towards commercialization of an aqueous ammonia process for CO2 capture with a reported lower heat of regeneration. We will discuss a thermodynamic analysis of this process recently completed by Fluor Corporation (Mathias 2008). In addition, we will discuss our work on tailoring ionic liquids for CO₂ capture from post-combustion flue gas.
  Paul Mathias, “The Role of Experimental Data in Chemical Process Technology,” 20th International Conference on Chemical Thermodynamics, Warsaw, Poland, August 3-8, 2008
   

• SPEAKER: Robert Quinn
  AFFILIATION: Air Products
  TITLE: Carbon Dioxide Capture by Adsorption: Traditional and Nontraditional Approaches

  ABSTRACT: Carbon dioxide capture from industrial gas streams presents a significant technical challenge. This presentation will discussed the utility of carbon dioxide adsorption processes as a potential solution. In the hydrogen production industry, adsorption processes are currently used to purify a crude hydrogen product and, as a consequence, separate large quantities of CO2. These “traditional” adsorption processes can be adapted to CO₂ capture from precombustion sources. A substantial effort is underway to develop “nontraditional” adsorption processes involving CO₂-reactive adsorbents for precombustion and the still more challenging postcombustion capture. An overview of these efforts and applicability to the CO₂ capture challenge will be presented.

SESSION III: Carbon Dioxide Sequestration

• SPEAKER: Richard D. Doctor
  AFFILIATION: Argonne National Laboratory
  TITLE: Carbon Dioxide Capture, Transport and Sequestration
  ABSTRACT: Commercial CO₂ capture systems already are available, and many have long-established records of service in the natural gas and petroleum industry. Outlays for these systems within the fence are straightforward to calculate and competition should modestly lower these costs. Certain geological formations are unusually well suited for carbon dioxide storage, but unless you are the exception rather than the rule, your facility is not sitting on top of a suitable sequestration zone. Carbon dioxide flooding of declining oil fields is the world market today, but such opportunities are limited compared to the amount of CO₂ recovery needed to make an impact on greenhouse gas emissions. You will need a CO₂ pipeline. The United States has developed an infrastructure of over 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) of carbon dioxide pipelines, which currently transport over 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year for use in oil recovery and has operated safely since the 1980s. Putting in a CO2 pipeline is well understood, but public hearings, pipeline right-of-ways, river crossings, “hazardous” class management for CO₂ will impact costs and your entire industry has never had to deal with these regulations before. The potential for high liability will demand more costly design and construction for CO₂ pipelines, and more stringent inspection standards, than for natural gas pipelines. One accident could have serious repercussions, both for your company and for the rest of the industry. This session will address these concerns.
  
   
• SPEAKER: Pete McGrail
  TITLE: Integrated Sequestration System Design: An Emerging Discipline for Low-Emissions Fossil Fuel Power Plants
  BIOGRAPHY: Dr. McGrail has been a staff member at PNNL for over 25 years and has attained the position of Laboratory Fellow, the highest level of scientific achievement at the laboratory. He is the principal investigator and manager of a diverse range of projects involving reaction and transport processes in porous media, including five prestigious Environmental Remediation Science Projects (ERSP). Dr. McGrail's recent interests have taken him into new research areas related to global climate change. He directs a wide variety of research projects in greenhouse gas emission management, which covers subjects from hydrodynamics and chemistry of supercritical CO₂–brine mixtures to development of new organic clathrates for CO2 capture from fossil–fuel power plants, work that was recently featured in Nature Materials. He has over 200 publications and presentations at international conferences on his research.
  ABSTRACT: Implementation of CO₂ capture and geologic sequestration systems with either existing power generating facilities as a retrofit or new installations will involve completely new and unintuitive challenges for designers, developers, and power plant operators. First is the CO₂ capture system, which represents a number of additional unit operations in the power plant, equivalent or exceeding size and cost of existing emissions control systems. Next is the compression equipment and pipeline infrastructure necessary to transport the CO₂ as a liquid or supercritical fluid from the power plant to the wellhead at the sequestration site. Last is the geologic sequestration system, which includes injection well(s) and a diverse set of passive and active monitoring system components. Each of these very disparate components must be designed to operate as a system to minimize cost and to ensure safe operations under normal and any off-normal conditions that might occur. This “Integrated Sequestration System Design” requires involvement of an extraordinary range of disciplines including, legal, insurance, chemical engineering, cost estimation, control and data acquisition systems, geology, geophysics, and numerical modeling expertise to name a few. In this paper, a set of case studies will be discussed to illustrate where the most significant problems in sequestration system design have been encountered. Practical methods and tools also will be discussed that have been developed to help overcome these challenges, including pipeline-to-wellbore thermohydraulic analysis linking the compression requirements at the power plant all the way to pressure requirements at the bottom of the injection well(s) at the sequestration site determined from complex multiphase flow and reactive transport simulations.

 (Top of page)

Permalink