title: Cutting the cost of carbon capture: a case for carbon capture and utilization.
abstract: A significant part of the cost for carbon capture and storage (CCS) is related to the compression of captured CO2to its supercritical state, at 150 bar and typically 99% purity. These stringent conditions may however not always be necessary for specific cases of carbon capture and utilization (CCU). In this manuscript, we investigate how much the parasitic energy of an adsorbent-based carbon capture process may be lowered by utilizing CO2at 1 bar and adapting the final purity requirement for CO2from 99% to 70% or 50%. We compare different CO2sources: the flue gases of coal-fired or natural gas-fired power plants and ambient air. We evaluate the carbon capture performance of over 60 nanoporous materials and determine the influence of the initial and final CO2purity on the parasitic energy of the carbon capture process. Moreover, we demonstrate the underlying principles of the parasitic energy minimization in more detail using the commercially available NaX zeolite. Finally, the calculated utilization cost of CO2is compared with the reported prices for CO2and published costs for CCS.
authors.affiliation: Center for Molecular Modeling, Ghent University, B-9052 Zwijnaarde, Belgium. veronique.vanspeybroeck@ugent.be.
authors.forename: Lennart
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Joos
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1462, USA.
authors.forename: Johanna M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Huck
authors.affiliation: Center for Molecular Modeling, Ghent University, B-9052 Zwijnaarde, Belgium. veronique.vanspeybroeck@ugent.be.
authors.forename: Veronique
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Van Speybroeck
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1462, USA and Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720- 1462, USA and Laboratory of Molecular Simulation, Institut des Sciences et Ingénierie Chimiques, Valais, Rue d'Industrie 17, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1950 Sion, Switzerland. berend.smit@epfl.ch.
authors.forename: Berend
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Smit