scholarly journals Membrane Processes for Direct Carbon Dioxide Capture From Air: Possibilities and Limitations

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Castel ◽  
Roda Bounaceur ◽  
Eric Favre

The direct capture of CO2 from air (DAC) has been shown a growing interest for the mitigation of greenhouse gases but remains controversial among the engineering community. The high dilution level of CO2 in air (0.04%) indeed increases the energy requirement and cost of the process compared to carbon capture from flue gases (with CO2 concentrations around 15% for coal power plants). Until now, solid sorbents (functionalized silica, ion exchange resins, metal–organic frameworks, etc.) have been proposed to achieve DAC, with a few large-scale demonstration units. Gas-liquid absorption in alkaline solutions is also explored. Besides adsorption and absorption, membrane processes are another key gas separation technology but have not been investigated for DAC yet. The objective of this study is to explore the separation performances of a membrane unit for CO2 capture from air through a generic engineering approach. The role of membrane material performances and the impact of the operating conditions of the process on energy requirement and module production capacity are investigated. Membranes are shown to require a high selectivity in order to achieve purity in no more than two stages. The specific energy requirement is globally higher than that of the adsorption and absorption processes, together with higher productivity levels. Guidelines on the possibilities and limitations of membranes for DAC are finally proposed.

2021 ◽  
Vol 237 ◽  
pp. 02021
Author(s):  
Jingqi Jin ◽  
Feng Xue ◽  
Bin Cai ◽  
Xinxin Yang ◽  
Yening Lai ◽  
...  

Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) is one of the key technologies for realizing large-scale low-carbon utilization of coal-fired power plants in service. How to evaluate its economics is crucial to the decision-making of traditional coal-fired power enterprises. This paper analyzes the changes in the physical, emission and economic parameters of in-service coal-fired power plants without and with the CCUS retrofit. A method for evaluating the economic feasibility of coal-fired power plants retrofitting based on net cash flow is proposed, which compares the impact of CCUS retrofit on the net present value of the remaining life cycle of the power plant. The impact of uncertain parameters such as carbon dioxide sales unit price, carbon capture device operating cost, free carbon quota, and carbon emission right price on the evaluation results are analyzed.


Author(s):  
Graeme G. King ◽  
Satish Kumar

Masdar is developing several carbon capture projects from power plants, smelters, steel works, industrial facilities and oil and gas processing plants in Abu Dhabi in a phased series of projects. Captured CO2 will be transported in a new national CO2 pipeline network with a nominal capacity of 20×106 T/y to oil reservoirs where it will be injected for reservoir management and sequestration. Design of the pipeline network considered three primary factors in the selection of wall thickness and toughness, (a) steady and transient operating conditions, (b) prevention of longitudinal ductile fractures and (c) optimization of total project owning and operating costs. The paper explains how the three factors affect wall thickness and toughness. It sets out code requirements that must be satisfied when choosing wall thickness and gives details of how to calculate toughness to prevent propagation of long ductile fracture in CO2 pipelines. It then uses cost optimization to resolve contention between the different requirements and arrive at a safe and economical pipeline design. The design work selected a design pressure of 24.5 MPa, well above the critical point for CO2 and much higher than is normally seen in conventional oil and gas pipelines. Despite its high operating pressure, the proposed network will be one of the safest pipeline systems in the world today.


2011 ◽  
Vol 63 (12) ◽  
pp. 2949-2956 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Humeau ◽  
F. Hourlier ◽  
G. Bulteau ◽  
A. Massé ◽  
P. Jaouen ◽  
...  

Greywater reuse inside buildings is a possible way to preserve water resources and face up to water scarcity. This study is focused on a technical-economic analysis of greywater treatment by a direct nanofiltration (NF) process or by a submerged membrane bioreactor (SMBR) for on-site recycling. The aim of this paper is to analyse the cost of recycled water for two different configurations (50 and 500 inhabitants) in order to demonstrate the relevance of the implementation of membrane processes for greywater recycling, depending on the production capacity of the equipment and the price of drinking water. The first step was to define a method to access the description of the cost of producing recycled water. The direct costs were defined as a sum of fixed costs due to equipment, maintenance and depreciation, and variable costs generated by chemical products and electricity consumptions. They were estimated from an experimental approach and from data found in literature, enabling operating conditions for greywater recycling to be determined. The cost of treated water by a SMBR unit with a processing capacity of 500 persons is close to 4.40 € m−3, while the cost is 4.81 € m−3 with a NF process running in the same conditions. These costs are similar to the price of drinking water in some European countries.


2013 ◽  
Vol 431 ◽  
pp. 139-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bee Ting Low ◽  
Li Zhao ◽  
Timothy C. Merkel ◽  
Michael Weber ◽  
Detlef Stolten

Author(s):  
Zhen Xian Lin ◽  
Lin Fu

With the process acceleration of China’s energy conservation and the full development of the market economy, the environmental protection is to coexist with the power plants’ benefits for thermal power plants. Relative to the traditional mode named “determining power by heat”, it is not adequate that the heating demand is only to be met, the maximizations of economy benefits and social benefits are also demanded. At present, several large-scale central heating modes are proposed by domestic and foreign scholars, such as the parallel arrangement and series arrangement of heating system for the traditional heating units and NCB heating units (NCB heating unit is a new condensing-extraction-backpressure steam turbine and used to generate the power and heat, it has the function of extraction heating turbine at constant power, back pressure turbine or extraction and back pressure heating turbine and extraction condensing heating turbine.), and running mode with heating units and absorbed heat pumps, and so on. Compare and analyze their heating efficiency, heating load, heating area, power generation, and the impact on the environment. The best heating mode can be found under the different boundary conditions, it can be used to instruct the further work. The energy utilization efficiency will be further improved.


Author(s):  
Brian Janke ◽  
Thomas Kuehn

Thermodynamic analysis has been conducted for geothermal power cycles using a portion of deep ground sequestered CO2 as the working fluid. This allows energy production from much shallower depths and in geologic areas with much lower temperature gradients than those of current geothermal systems. Two different system designs were analyzed for power production with varying reservoir parameters, including reservoir depth, temperature, and CO2 mass flow rate. The first design is a direct single-loop system with the CO2 run directly through the turbine. This system was found to provide higher system efficiency and power production, however design complications such as the need for high pressure turbines, two-phase flow through the turbine and the potential for water-CO2 brine mixtures, could require the use of numerous custom components, driving up the cost. The second design is a binary system using CO2 as the heat transfer fluid to supply thermal energy to an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC). While this system was found to have slightly less power production and efficiency than the direct system, it significantly reduces the impact of design complications associated with the direct system. This in turn reduces the necessity for certain custom components, thereby reducing system cost. While performance of these two systems is largely dependent on location and operating conditions, the binary system is likely applicable to a larger number of sites and will be more cost effective when used in combination with current off-the-shelf ORC power plants.


2014 ◽  
Vol 521 ◽  
pp. 530-535
Author(s):  
Meng Wang ◽  
Jian Ding ◽  
Tian Tang ◽  
Zhang Sui Lin ◽  
Zhen Da Hu ◽  
...  

The current situation of nuclear power plants at home and abroad is described, and the impact of large-scale nuclear power accessing to the grid is analyzed, specifically in the aspects of nuclear power modeling, simulation, load following, reliability, fault diagnosis, etc. Nuclear power accessing to the grid will bring a series of problems, the causes of each problem, the main solutions and future development directions are summarized.


Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Gros

AREVA has been running since decades nuclear reprocessing and recycling installations in France. Several industrial facilities have been built and used to this aim across the time. Following those decades and with the more and more precise monitoring of the impact of those installations, precise data and lessons-learned have been collected that can be used for the stakeholders of potential new facilities. China has expressed strong interest in building such facilities. As a matter of fact, the issue of accumulation of spent fuel is becoming serious in China and jeopardizes the operation of several nuclear power plants, through the running out of space of storage pools. Tomorrow, with the extremely high pace of nuclear development of China, accumulation of spent fuel will be unbearable. Building reprocessing and recycling installations takes time. A decision has to be taken so as to enable the responsible development of nuclear in China. Without a solution for the back end of its nuclear fuel cycle, the development of nuclear energy will face a wall. This is what the Chinese central government, through the action of its industrial CNNC, has well understood. Several years of negotiations have been held with AREVA. Everybody in the sector seems now convinced. However, now that the negotiation is coming to an end, an effort should be done towards all the stakeholders, sharing actual information from France’s reference facilities on: safety, security, mitigation measures for health protection (of the workers, of the public), mitigation measures for the protection of the environment. Most of this information is public, as France has since years promulgated a law on Nuclear transparency. China is also in need for more transparency, yet lacks means to access this public information, often in French language, so let’s open our books!


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