CCS is a well investigated and fairly promising technology for reducing the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere. However, it is rarely implemented in the industry due to its high cost. Therefore, this work proposes a cost optimized CCS chain which can be operated flexibly and safely. For the capture process a post combustion chemical absorption technology is chosen due to its retrofitting possibility to already existing power plants and its low capture cost. In order to find a cost efficient absorption process for different scenarios, the five most promising process configurations from previous work are combined into a superstructure in a rigorous rate based reactive Aspen Plus model. This in turn is optimized by a two-stage stochastic programming approach in Matlab. The optimal supply chain network is identified by a tailor made transshipment model implemented in GAMS, which accounts for the most promising transportation units, storage sites as well as direct utilizatio... [more]

For this year’s EURECHA challenge we have made our report with two very different segments in mind. One is technical and is based on verifiable data, calculations and of course computer simulations, while the other segment is more illustrative, and serves only to give better representations. Of course bigger emphasis was put on the technical part. The computer simulations done for technical part of this report cover electrical provision from the light ends of the crude oil, fertilizer production using ammonia, which is produced taking heavy oil as a raw material. Furthermore, water recycling at the refinery and of course provision of potable water for the growing city is also considered. The simulation results showed that using suitable technologies and process integration it is possible to obtain a sustainable development of the Sheikhdom. The illustrative part is basically a city of 20,000 made in a computer game called “CITIES:Skylines”. The game allows the user to import real life... [more]

The escalating urgency to address climate change has driven carbon capture (CC) technologies into the spotlight, particularly for large-scale emitters, which benefit from economies of scale. However, small-scale emitters account for a significant share of CO2 emissions, yet such applications remain largely overlooked in the literature. While CC cost is often used as a key performance indicator (KPI) for CC technologies, the lack of standardized cost estimation methods leads to inconsistencies, complicating comparisons, and hindering the deployment of CC systems. This study addresses these challenges by developing flexible short-cut correlations for selected CC technologies, providing estimates of the total equipment cost (TEC) and energy consumption specific to small-scale applications across various CO2 inlet concentrations (mol%) and capture scales (10 – 100 kt/y). The flexibility of the correlations enables the integration of various cost estimation methods available in the literatu... [more]