Carbon Capture Costs: FEED & pre-FEED Cost Reports

Linde Inc., with Linde Engineering Americas, Linde Engineering Dresden, and Svante Inc., is completing an initial engineering design for a commercial-scale CO₂ capture plant at its steam methane reforming hydrogen facility in Port Arthur, Texas. Using Svante’s VeloxoTherm™ solid adsorbent technology, the system will capture about 1 million tonnes of CO₂ annually at ≥90% efficiency while producing 99.97% pure “blue” hydrogen. The design will include ISBL units for flue gas conditioning and CO₂ purification, OSBL components, and a techno-economic analysis of capture costs and hydrogen production economics.

A Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) study was undertaken to design an advanced CO2 Capture Unit (CCU) to produce 1000 tonnes per day of CO2 from the exhaust of three Once-Through Steam Generators (OTSG’s) at Devon Energy’s Jackfish 1 thermal in-situ operations and estimate the capital expenditure for the facilities within +/-15% accuracy. The process utilizes HTC Purenergy Carbon Capture Technology to capture CO2 from the OTSG exhaust gas using an aqueous chemical solvent in an absorber tower, after which the CO2-loaded solvent is passed to a stripper tower where the CO2 is released and the solvent regenerated. The study excludes downstream CO2 compression, dehydration, transportation and storage.

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.