Efficient CO2 capture from lime plants: Techno-economic assessment of integrated concepts using indirectly heated carbonate looping technology

• Published in: Carbon Capture Science & Technology 2024-06, Vol.11, p.100187, Article 100187
• Main Authors: Greco-Coppi, Martin, Seufert, Peter, Hofmann, Carina, Rolfe, Angela, Huang, Ye, Rezvani, Sina, Ströhle, Jochen, Epple, Bernd
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Carbon dioxide removal (CDR); CO2 capture in the lime production; Heat recovery optimization; Indirectly heated carbonate looping; Solid recovered fuel (SRF); Techno-economic assessment
• ISSN: 2772-6568; 2772-6568
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ccst.2023.100187

•Techno-economic assessment on ten CO2 capture configurations for lime production.•IHCaL technology is promising in terms of economic viability and energy efficiency.•Heat recovery strategies can be tailored to achieve different optimization outcomes.•CO2 avoidance costs are low if solid recovered fuel (SRF) is used (less than 25 €/tCO2,av).•Computing negative CO2 emissions further reduces the avoidance costs by around 25 %. The quest to decarbonize the lime and cement industry is challenging because of the amount and the nature of the CO2 emissions. The process emissions from calcination are unavoidable unless carbon capture is deployed. Nevertheless, the majority of the available carbon capture technologies are expensive and energy inefficient. The indirectly heated carbonate looping (IHCaL) process is a promising technology to capture CO2 from the lime and cement production, featuring low penalties in terms of economics and energy utilization. Previous works have highlighted the potential of the IHCaL, but the optimization of the process has not been discussed in enough detail and techno-economic implications are not yet fully understood. Within this work, ten scenarios using IHCaL technology to capture CO2 from a lime plant were simulated. Hereby, different process configurations, heat recovery strategies and fueling options were computed. The calculations for the capture facilities were performed with Aspen Plus® software and EBSILON®Professional was used to simulate the steam cycles. A techno-economic assessment was included as well, aided by the ECLIPSE software. The results demonstrate that the selection of the fuel for the combustor not only affects the CO2 balance and energy performance but is also an important cost driver —there were considerable economic advantages for the computed cases with middle-caloric solid recovered fuel (SRF). The analysis shows how the heat recovery strategy can be optimized to achieve tailored outcomes, such as reduced fuel requirement or increased power production. The specific primary energy consumption (from −0.3 to +2.5 MJLHV/tCO2,av) and cost for CO2 avoided (from −11 to +25 €/tCO2,av) using SRF are considerably low, compared with other technologies for the same application. The sensitivity study revealed that the main parameters that impact the economics are the discount rate and the project life. The capture plants are more sensitive to parameter changes than the reference plant, and the plants using SRF are mo