Adsorption Research in the Edinburgh Carbon Capture Group

Hyungwoong Ahn

Institute for Materials and Processes

School of Engineering

The University of Edinburgh, UK

RSA Visit - March 01, 2011

Academic Staff

Dr Hannah Chalmers

Dr Tina Düren

Prof Stefano Brandani

Prof Jon Gibbins

Dr Lev Sarkisov

Dr Xianfeng Fan

Current Ph.D StudentsCurrent Ph.D StudentsResearch Staff

Dr Jennifer Williams

Administrative Staff

Ms Leigh Murray

Dr Maria-ChiaraFerrari

Dr Daniel Friedrich

Mr DavideBocciardo

Mr Linjiang Chen

Mr Wenli Dang

Ms EmanuelaDi Baise

Ms Olivia Errey

Ms Zoe Kapetaki

Mr EnzoMangano

Mr Dursun Can Ozcan

Ms Raana Tohid

Mr Ignacio Trabadela

Mr Eric Hu

Dr Hyungwoong Ahn

Dr Carlos Ferreiro

Dr Mathieu Lucquiaud

Mr Bill Buschle

Mr Stephen Kwelle

Mr Xu Xu

Recruiting two PhDs and two Postdocs

IPCC Report – Carbon Capture and Storage – www.ipcc.ch

Coal fired power stations – 750 g/kWh

A 1 GW plant:

Emits >750 tonnes per hour of CO2

Approx 1/90 of full scale for 1 GW

Costs > £1 Billion

Uses 40% of the energy if installed as a “plug and play”, 25-30% with R&D.

Carbon capture – amines

CO2 capture plant in Malaysia, using a 200 tonne d-1

KEPCO/MHI chemical solvent process (c. Misubishi)

Retrofit of Amine Process into a Coal-fired Power Plant

Required reboiler duty [MJ/kgCO2] : Base case (3.54) > Case 1 (3.39) > Case 2 (3.35) > Case 3 (3.11)

Design basis• Subcritical coal-fired power plant with bituminous coal.

• Solvent : 30wt% aqueous MEA.

• 90% CO2 capture, constant heat input to the power

plant, CO2 compression up to 150 bar.

• Reboiler steam from the extraction of IP/LP crossover in

the steam cycle.

• Unisim R390.

• Power plant efficiency drop by retrofit : 8–10%.

Amine process scheme study

Case 1 : absorber intercooling Case 2 : absorber intercooling & water spray Case 3: split-amine flow

Semi-lean amine

Lean amine

• A good current adsorbent @ 0.1 bar – CO2 capacity 10 % w/w

• Allow for improvement – CO2 capacity 20 % w/w

– Assume bulk density 800 kg/m3

– Assume column diameter 4 m

• Typical Temperature Swing Adsorption cycle

– 2 hours

– 15000 tonnes of adsorbent

– Adsorbent bed length 1.5 km (cumulative)

• Typical Pressure/Vacuum Swing Adsorption cycle– 2 minutes– 250 tonnes of adsorbent– Adsorbent bed length 250 m (cumulative)

Why need innovation?Estimates for 1 GW

• CO2 capture will require a significant improvement in the adsorbents.

• CO2 capture will require a step change in the engineering of adsorption cycles– VSA Cycle times < 10-20 seconds.

• Existing simulation codes will NOT predict process dynamics reliably!

• Will need experimental techniques for testing novel materials.

• Target : The energy consumption of an adsorption process should be less than half of that of MEA process.

Why need innovation?Adsorption

Current Research Projects on Carbon Capture (Adsorption)

PI EP/G062129/1Innovative Gas Separations for Carbon Capture

£2,081,429

CoI EP/G02037X/1Carbon Capture and Storage Interactive: CCSI - Edinburgh

£113,159

CoI EP/F034520/1Carbon Capture from Power Plant and Atmosphere

£4,049,919

PI EP/I010939/1 FOCUS – Fundamentals of Optimised Capture Using Solids

£644,440

CoI EP/I016686/1 Carbon Nanotube for Carbon Capture £247,913

PIUS-DOE Project DE-FC26-07NT43092

Carbon Dioxide Removal from Flue Gas Using Microporous Metal Organic Frameworks

US$ 458,000

Approximately £3,000,000 of external funding to the group and University investment for new equipment.

UK IGSCC Consortium

St Andrews University

Cardiff UniversityImperial College

University of Manchester

University College London

University of Edinburgh(coordinator)

The Innovative Gas Separation for Carbon Capture (IGSCC) Project

Aims

• Apply a range of experimental techniques to determine equilibrium and kinetic

properties of nanoporous materials, which are being developed for CO2 capture.

• Develop detailed simulations of membrane and adsorption units that will be used

for parameter estimation and process optimization in the integration of carbon

capture in power plants

Materials

Thanks to this broad collaboration a wide range of materials can be tested:

• PIMs (University of Manchester, Cardiff University)

• BPL Carbon (University of Manchester, Cardiff University, UCL)

• Oxides (UCL)

• MOFs, Zeolites & Mesoporous Silicas (St. Andrews University)

CO2 Ranking

Adsorption Capacities of New Materials in mol/kg

Univ.of StA

Cardiff Univ.

UCL

Univ. of Manchester

(*) TGA not available

Despite their relative low capacity, PIMsare very promising materials for CO2

capture, because they can be used to make gas separation membranes.

Adsorption process model hierarchy

Developing models for the various simplifications gives us a model hierarchy with different models which are valid in different parameter regimes

• Column code is integrated into a cycle simulator

• Arbitrary sequence of steps

• Preliminary results are comparable to Adsim

Preliminary results for thecycle simulator

Simulation code to be used for VSA cycle of interactive – PE project

Input (power station)• CO2 cylinder / compressed air (1:5)

• MFCs supply gas mixture to VSA

• Solid-state CO2 concentration sensors

Capture unit (adsorption)• Vacuum-swing capture system

• 24Vdc solenoid valves

• 100g HISIV in two cylinders

Output (oilfield/aquifer)• CO2 storage in simulated aquifer

Entire unit controlled by LabVIEW• Flexible interface; can be programmed

for different uses

Engaging the Public

Carbon Capture and Storage Interactive: CCSIEPSRC (EP/G02037X/1)

Designed for public engagement

• Low pressure VSA (0-2.3 bara)

for safety

• Low flow rates (2.5 l/min) to

minimise consumable costs

• Fast cycle times (< 60s) for short

attention spans

• 16% CO2 input, 50% CO2 output

sufficient for display use

• Remotely controlled by operator,

but can run as a timed demo

• Supported by graphic displays, to

set context for CCS

• Intended to encourage public

debate

Bench-scale 6-column VSA process for PCC

• Target : 90% CO2 capture and 95% CO2 purity

P P P PP PP PP

PPPPPPPPPPPP

MFM

Waste

LR

BF

PE (in)

HR

PE (out)

EV

HR

Feed

Product

Recycle

MFC

MFM

MFC

MFM

MFM

BufferTank

P

CO2 Bombe

MFM

VacuumPump

Wet Gas Meter

Wet Gas Meter

MFM

BPR(Mechanical)

Pressure Tranducer

Vent

Gas Analyser

Vent

Vent

Gas Analyser

BufferTank

(1 atm)

P

PSV(1.5 atm)

PSV(3.0 atm)

P P P P P P

P P P P P P

P

P

P

P

BF

BF

BF

V01 V02 V03 V04 V05 V06

V07 V08 V09 V10 V11 V12

V13 V14 V15 V16 V17 V18

V19 V20 V21 V22 V23 V24

V25 V26 V27 V28 V29 V30

V31 V32 V33 V34 V35 V36

V37 V38 V39 V40 V41 V42

V55 V56 V57 V58 V59 V60

V61

V62

V65

V66

LR(out) WasteV43 V44 V45 V46 V47 V48

V49 V50 V51 V52 V53 V54

Waste

MFM

Vent

Gas Analyser

P

VentV63

V64

V67

V68

PSV(10.0 atm)

PP

N2 Bombe

MFC

Mixed gasBombe(later)

MFC

3-waymanualvalve

Drying ColumnV69

V70

V71

BufferTank

(3 atm)

P

PSV(10.0 atm)

Booster(controlled to keep the downstream pressure around 3 atm

CaO-looping process for cement industry

• Around 1600 kg of raw meterial is needed to produce 1,000 kg cement.

• As much as 0.83 tonne of CO2 is produced for every tonne of cement.

• In worldwid, the CO2 emission from the cement industry accounts for around 7%.

(Coal-fired power plant emission : 60%)

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CaO-looping process for cement industry

• Option 1 : carbon capture from kiln gas and calcination with fuel and oxygen.

(4.1 MJ/kg CO2 w/o heat recovery, ASU required)

• Option 2 : carbon capture from kiln gas and calcination by indirect heating.

(6.1 MJ/kg CO2 w/o heat recovery)

ASU

Conclusions

� A study on retrofit of post-combustion amine process into coal-fired power plant by Unisim simulation – Estimation of energy penalty.

� Developing novel solid sorbents with a higher CO2 capacity and experimental method to evaluate its performance fast.

� Simulation tool for cyclic adsorption processes with tailored discretisation schemes for the fluid and solid phase.

� Developing a carbonate looping process for cement industry.

Future work

� Dynamic process simulation with Unisim : coal-fired power station with amine process, IGCC with Selexol.

� Detailed thermodynamics in aqueous salt system.

� Parameter estimation from experimental data.

� Process optimization : adsorption process.