Carbon Capture Costs: FEED & pre-FEED Cost Reports

Dastur International Inc., with Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., is designing a carbon capture system for the 5 mtpa integrated steel plant in Burns Harbor, Indiana, to capture 50–70% of CO₂ emissions from blast furnace gas. The system will combine a gas flow distribution network, a specialized conditioning process, and ION Clean Energy’s solvent-based capture technology with 90–98% efficiency, with water-gas shift reactors enabling higher capture rates. Dastur will lead overall plant integration and engineering, while ION designs the capture island and Dastur Energy optimizes design and energy performance.

Scope starts with the receipt of natural gas and fuel gas mixture from the existing Plant 01 and Plant 09 source and terminates with hydrogen (H₂) at the required specification and conditions to be used as fuel in the existing SMR unit. High concentration CO₂ from the ATR is captured and H₂ production from the proposed facility will replace the fuel gas feed to the primary reformer for heating. The facility capacity is based on the heating duty required to replace the current fuel source. The scope for the study involves the new ATR unit and associated downstream shift, CO₂ capture, and syngas purification unit. The project scope also includes an ASU to supply oxygen to the ATR unit.

Cleco Power (Cleco) performed a three-phase front-end engineering and design (FEED) study evaluating installation of a carbon dioxide (CO2) Capture System at Madison Unit 3 (MU3), Project Diamond Vault (DV) The work was performed under a Department of Energy (DOE) grant DE-FE0032165. The FEED study included three phases: (1) a feasibility phase which sought to define the scope of the project, (2) a pre-FEED phase which sought to develop a detailed cost estimate, and (3) a final FEED phase which sought to develop the project to be ready to move into execution. The FEED study was completed by Cleco, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America (MHIA), and Sargent & Lundy, LLC (S&L) with oversight provided by the Louisiana Economic Development (LED). The feasibility phase was completed in February 2023, which was followed by the pre-FEED phase which concluded in January 2024. The project subsequently entered the final FEED phase, during this phase Cleco made the decision to stop work on the FEED study due to market conditions which resulted in a project that was not economically viable at the time.