Carbon Capture Costs: FEED & pre-FEED Cost Reports

In March 2010, the Scottish CCS (Carbon Capture & Storage) Consortium began an extensive Front End, Engineering and Design (FEED) study to assess what exactly would be required from an engineering, commercial and regulatory, perspective in order to progress the CCS demonstration project at Longannet Power station in Scotland (Goldeneye) through to construction. The study has yielded invaluable knowledge in areas such as cost, design, end-to-end CCS chain operation, health and safety, environment, consent and permitting, risk management, and lessons learnt.

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.

Analysis sets the design and cost-estimating basis for evaluating pulp and board mills with and without CCS. Two base cases are considered: a market pulp mill and an integrated pulp and board mill. Six CCS cases are evaluated, capturing CO₂ from the recovery boiler, multi-fuel boiler, lime kiln, or their combinations. The mills are assumed to be energy independent, with black liquor and bark burned to produce steam and electricity, and excess electricity exported to the grid. The CO₂ capture system uses post-combustion MEA technology with a 90% capture rate, and if on-site electricity is insufficient, an auxiliary boiler firing forest residues will supply the additional energy. Capture of CO2 in the Multi-fuel Boiler only