Planning of carbon capture and storage with pinch analysis techniques

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a means for reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion in power generation and industrial processes. It involves the capture of CO2 for subsequent storage in various geological formations. The selection and matching of the power plants and storage sites are often an issue of optimisation due to various constraints, i.e., time of availability, injection rate, and storage capacity limits. In this work, a novel graphical targeting tool based on pinch analysis is proposed to address the planning problem of the storage of captured CO2 from power generating plants into corresponding reservoirs. The main consideration for the problem is the time of availability of the latter, since reservoirs need to be developed prior to CO2 storage. The time limitation is addressed by the graphical technique where time is taken as the governing element in solving the problem. Hypothetical examples are used to elucidate the proposed approach. (C) 2013 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.