CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE

Most of the mentioned options will be very specific to the location and plant. However, CCS could be
applied to almost all processes in some form. CCS is the process of removing or reducing the CO 2
content of streams normally released to atmosphere and transporting that captured CO 2 to a location
for permanent storage. CCS can be applied to a wide range of large single-point sources, such as
process streams, heater and boiler exhausts, and vents from a range of high
CO2 footprint industries including: power generation, refining, natural gas treating, chemicals,
cement production and steel production. There are three main classifications of technologies
applied:
Pre-combustion capture
Post-combustion capture
Oxy-fuel combustion capture.
Once captured, the CO2 is compressed, dried and transported to a suitable storage location such as a
saline aquifer, a depleted oil field (where enhanced oil recovery could be applied) or a depleted gas
fields. Each CCS route here is a

Pre-combustion CO2 capture.

A solid or gaseous feedstock is fed to an oxygen or air-blown pressurized gasifier or reformer, where
it is converted to syngas. The syngas is then passed through a shift reactor to increase the hydrogen
(H2) and CO2 content of the syngas.
This high-pressure (HP), high-temperature syngas is cooled before being washed with a solvent to
absorb the CO2 leaving an essentially pure H2 stream and a CO2-rich solvent stream. The solvent
regeneration process then releases a CO2 stream that can be dried and compressed for export. This
process offers a high degree of integration potential as it generates a pure high-pressure H2 stream,
and the syngas cooling train can be used to raise a significant quantity of HP, medium-pressure (MP)
and low-pressure (LP) steam, as shown in Fig. 2. Pre-combustion variations include:
A range of coals, petcoke, fuel oils, municipal solid waste and biomass can be used as gasifier
feedstock.
Natural gas and light liquid feedstocks can be used with a reformer.
A range of CO2 solvent removal systems are available along with methyl-diethanolamine (MDEA)
as well as alternative technologies such as membranes and pressure-swing absorption (PSA).
Fig. 2. Pre-combustion flow scheme.

Pre-combustion applications.
The most obvious application of pre-combustion carbon capture would be a newbuild power plant
in which the H2-rich stream is combusted in a gas turbine, and the steam raised during syngas heat
recovery is used, along with heat recovered from the gas turbine exhaust, in a steam turbine to form
a combined cycle plant such as an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) facility. This
scheme could similarly be used on a refinery for co-generation of low embedded-carbon hydrogen
and heat to be supplied to other refinery units or with a steam turbine to raise power.
The acid-gas removal step is typically characterized by its HP syngas feedstock composed of mainly
H2, CO2 and CO. The same acid-gas removal process can also be applied to similar syngases in
processes such as steam methane reformer (SMR) H2 production, natural gas treating and ammonia
productioneven decarbonization of refinery fuel gas could be considered. The pre-combustion
scheme can also be used for repowering an existing gas turbine power island or any burner that is
capable of switching to decarbonized syngas, with or without burner modification.
Post-combustion CO2 capture.
Combustion flue gas is cooled by direct water contact before entering a blower designed to overcome
the absorption system pressure drop. The flue gas enters the absorption column where it is washed
with a physical solvent such as monoethanolamine (MEA). The flue gas is scrubbed of up to 90% of
its CO2 content and is returned to the combustor stack and released to atmosphere. The CO 2-rich
solvent is then heated against lean solvent and regenerated in a