Modelling carbon capture from power plants with low energy and water consumption using a novel cryogenic technology

Global warming mitigation requires modern energy generation technology to integrate low-cost carbon capture techniques. Despite volumes of research on the latter, the significantly high unit energy (MWh) of capture and high water consumption, do not enable any current carbon capture techniques to be adopted at a scale. To address this problem, we theoretically explore a novel low-cost carbon capture technology (NLCCT). In this paper, a detailed thermodynamic analysis of the effects of the operating conditions and parameters of NLCCT, such as the initial feed gas concentration, compressor intercooler temperature, number of compressor stages, efficiencies of the compressors, and turbines, ambient temperatures on the energy consumption for CO2 capture (ECC) is carried out with a view to obtain costs much lower than current techniques. The study identifies the inlet feed concentration, turbine and compressor efficiencies, and compressor intercooler temperatures (heat transfer effectiveness) as the significant parameters. For a drop of 20 % efficiency, the ECC was found to increase by 40 %, and for an increase in inlet CO2 feed concentration from 4 % to 10 %, the ECC was found to decrease by 31 %. Considering the effect of intercooler temperatures, the ECC increases by 25 % when the intercooler temperature is raised by 6 K. The effect of ambient conditions was also analyzed and observed that for an increase of 27C in the ambient temperature, the ECC would rise by 15 %.