Introduction to carbon capture and storage

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the process of removing or reducing the CO2
content of streams normally released to the atmosphere and transporting that
captured CO2 to a location for permanent storage. CCS can be applied to a wide
range of large single-point sources, such as process streams, heater and boiler
exhausts, and vents from a range of high CO2 footprint industries, including power
generation, refining, natural gas treating, chemicals, cement production and steel
production. There are three main classifications of technologies employed:
Pre-combustion capture
Post-combustion capture
Oxyfuel combustion capture.

Once captured, the CO2 is compressed, dried and transported to a suitable storage
location such as a saline aquifer, depleted oil field (where enhanced oil recovery
could be employed) or depleted gas field.

Each CCS route described below comprises a group of technologies based on

similar process flow schemes. For each method, an example process description
and flow scheme are given and the key variations highlighted.

Post-combustion CO2 capture

Combustion flue gas is cooled by direct water contact before entering a blower
designed to overcome the absorption system pressure drop. The flue gas enters the
absorption column, where it is washed with a physical solvent such as
monoethanolamine (MEA). The flue gas is scrubbed of up to 90% of its CO2
content and is returned to the combustor stack and released to atmosphere. The
CO2-rich solvent is then heated against lean solvent and regenerated in a stripping
column. The solvent then returns to the absorption column, while the released CO2
is dried and compressed for export. The highlight of the post-combustion process is
that it is suited not only to new installations but may also be retrofitted to existing
plants (see Figure 1).

There are variations on this post-combustion scheme:

A range of processes exists utilizing different solvents: MEA, ammonia, sterically
hindered MEA and even seawater
For high-sulphur feeds, the process may be coupled with a flue gas
desulphurisation unit, allowing the direct contact cooler to be eliminated.
Post-combustion CO2 capture is a simpler system than pre-combustion, described
below, and can be combined with almost any type of combustion system. Very
large single-point sources such as utility-scale power plants present a challenge in
terms of maximum scale-up in a single leap. However, the scheme shown above
has already been demonstrated for many years for the production of CO2 for use in
the food and chemicals industries. Some of these plants are already at an
appropriate size to capture CO2 from point sources the size of refinery-fired
heaters and boilers.2,3
Depending on the specific site, post-combustion carbon capture could be applied to
a number of refinery flue gas sources at the same time (such as fired heaters, FCC,
hydrogen production units), with the cooler, blower and absorber located as close
as possible to each source (or group of sources), with the rich solvent then pumped
to one or multiple solvent regeneration units and one or multiple compression
units. This offers flexibility to fit in the large capture equipment around the
existing, often crowded plot.
Pre-combustion CO2 capture
A hydrocarbon feedstock is fed to an oxygen- or air-blown pressurized gasifier or
reformer, where it is converted to syngas. The syngas is then passed through a shift
reactor, which increases the hydrogen and CO2 content of the syngas. This highpressure, high-temperature syngas is then cooled before being washed with a
solvent to absorb the CO2, leaving an essentially pure hydrogen stream and a CO2rich solvent stream.