Techno-economic assessment of CO2 capture at steam methane reforming facilities using commercially available technology

International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, Volume 9, July 2012, Pages 160–171
Techno-economic assessment of CO2 capture at steam methane reforming facilities using commercially available technology
J.C. Meerman a, E.S. Hamborg b, T. van Keulen a, A. Ramírez a, W.C. Turkenburg a, A.P.C. Faaij a
a Energy & Resources, Copernicus Institute, Utrecht University, 3584 CD Utrecht, The Netherlands
b Procede Gas Treating B.V., P.O. Box 328, 7500 AH Enschede, The Netherlands
Abstract
Authors present the optimal techno-economic configuration of CO2 capture at steam methane reforming facilities using currently available technologies by means of process simulations. They determine that the optimal system is CO2 capture with ADIP-X located between the water–gas shift and pressure swing adsorption units.
Process simulations of this system configuration showed a CO2 emission reduction of 60% at 41 €/t CO2 avoidance. This is at the lower end of the range reported in open literature for CO2 capture at refineries (26–82 €/t CO2) and below the avoidance costs for CO2 capture at natural gas-fired power plants (44–93 €/t CO2). CO2 avoidance costs are dominated by the natural gas consumption, responsible for up to 66% of total costs. Using imported steam and electricity can reduce CO2 avoidance costs by 45%. Addition of small amounts of piperazine to aqueous MDEA solutions results in up to 70% smaller absorbers or 10% lower reboiler heat duty. Optimising the whole capture process instead of individual units resulted in lower piperazine concentrations than the common industrial practice.
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