Techno-economic performance and challenges of applying CO2 capture in the industry: A case study of five industrial plants

To date, literature often presents generic results on the techno-economic performance of CO2 capture in industry. Insufficient knowledge is available on the impact of site-specific factors on the feasibility of CO2 capture at industrial plant level. This article presents a techno-economic analysis and an inventory of potential implementation and operational challenges related to the three main CO2 capture technologies applied at industrial plant level for the short term (2020-2025) and long term (2040-2050). Five industrial plants from various industrial sectors (a medium and large sized petroleum refinery, a small and medium sized chemical plant, and a large hydrogen plant) in the Netherlands were used for this study. The results show the lowest CO2 avoidance costs for the refineries (24-57 (sic)/t) and chemical plants (37-124 (sic)/t) when operated in oxyfuel combustion mode, both for the short and long term, although post-combustion is economically preferable for the smallest chemical plant (117 (sic)/t) in the short term. For the hydrogen plant, avoidance costs (67 (sic)/t) are lowest when capturing CO2 solely from the high-pressure process gas. For the short term cases, spatial constraints on existing plant sites could increase the indicated CO2 avoidance costs, especially for post-combustion capture; for the long term cases, new-built capture ready process units, plant integration and optimized utilities are expected to lower the avoidance costs for all three capture technologies. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.