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AbstractFor a commercial Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) chain to be successful, it must satisfy a whole range of requirements: technical, economic, environmental, safety, and societal. A comprehensive, understandable and reproducible assessment of CCS projects is a complex task due to several reasons: wide range of actors and factors involved, substantial differences in the type and nature of both actors and factors, and numerous associated uncertainties. In this paper, a standardised methodology is described and illustrated on a few examples of relatively simple case studies. The proposed methodology provides means and tools for evaluation of several economic, environmental, and in the future also risk associated criteria and thereby enables selection of the most promising options for CCS. The methodology will also help to reduce the uncertainty by improving understanding of the most important dependencies and trends for the investigated key performance indicators as enlightened by the case studies examples. It could also help to design efficient incentives and measures to stimulate realization of CCS by identifying and evaluating the most important non-technical factors affecting the CCS chain viability.

AbstractThe ECCO project has been a three-year collaboration project under the EU 7th framework program for research. The main objective of ECCO has been to facilitate strategic decision making regarding early and future implementation of CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) value chains. The ECCO project has developed a methodology and a supporting software tool for pre-feasibility studies of CCS value chains with and without Enhanced Oil or Gas Recovery (EOGR). Conclusions and recommendations for the realization of CCS value chains are presented in this paper. The overall conclusion, based on the work conducted in ECCO, is that political willingness is crucial in order to make CCS happen on a scale that contributes to reaching the EU climate goals. If left to the market, investments in CCS technology development are likely to be insufficient, although using CO2 for EOGR could improve the economics of a CCS value chain. It is also clear that economic incentives are necessary for overcoming issues such as long-term liability of CO2 storage, third-party access to pipeline and storage and cross-border liability of storage integrity.

Abstract There is a need to gather new knowledge on the fundamental properties of CO 2 mixtures with impurities and their impact on the chain integrity and economics of Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) chains. One of the main results from the FP7 IMPACTS project is the IMPACTS toolbox, which comprises new experimental data, thermodynamic reference models for CO 2 mixtures relevant for CCS and the framework for CCS risk assessment taking Health Safety & Environment aspects, the impact of the quality of the CO 2 and CCS chain integrity into account, and finally the recommendations report.

This paper addresses technical and operational aspects pertaining to the transport of CO2. It deals with lessons learnt from the development of three large CCS demonstration projects: The UK-based Don Valley project, the Dutch ROAD project, and the Spanish Compostilla project. These projects were all selected by the European Commission in 2009 to receive funding under the European Energy Programme for Recovery (EEPR). The purpose of the demonstration projects is to verify feasible capture techniques (i.e. gasification, flue-gas cleaning, and oxy-coal combustion in circulating fluidised bed, respectively), and to demonstrate geological storage options, off-shore and on-shore. As the distance and elevation of the CO2 transport system are inherently given by the project, the transport conditions for the CO2 will generally differ from one project to another. The demonstration projects have shown that the thermophysical nature of CO2 is prone to complicate certain operational procedures mainly due to phenomena like phase change, hydrate formation and Joule-Thomson cooling. The front-end engineering design studies suggest, however, that the handling of CO2 is quite feasible during normal operation, although customised solutions may be required to handle transients like emergency shut-down and pipeline re-pressurisation. This implies that CO2 transport is not seen as an insuperable hurdle to the design and operation of large CCS systems.

The COCATE project is a three-year collaboration project under the EU 7th framework program for research. One of the objective of COCATE project is to tackle the problems of rolling out a shared transportation infrastructure capable of connecting geological storage sites with various CO2 emitting industrial facilities. An economic model based on a dynamic linear programming system was developed, which all along the analyzed period of deployment of CO2 network, matches the capacity left in each storage site with the CO2 transported flow rates, in order to decide how, when and where to invest in a transport facility. The model defines in this way an optimized transport network system, with the only objective of minimizing the overall costs of CO2 transport. Five case studies were developed leading to find a cost optimized network between 3 sources of different emission profiles, 3 sinks of different capacities, with 2 defined harbours. The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. and/or peer-review under responsibility of GHGT.

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to assess the timeline for capture and storage of carbon dioxide (CCS) by inverting the 450 Scenario of the IEA – especially the Blue Map Scenario – limiting the greenhouse gas emissions by 50–80% by 2050. In this pursuit, the critical stages of a new energy technology have been addressed. The timeline is considered in a global perspective on the basis of available prognoses for fossil fuels – especially coal. Relevant research questions are: (1) what generating capacity is required to meet the global demands, and (2) which capture rate would be realistic and sufficient. In answering these questions, the study employs two empirical “laws” that apply to new energy technology options in the transition and the stabilisation phase. This approach is used to determine the required scale-up rates and to compare efforts and impacts associated with prior experience from successful energy technologies implemented over the past century. Criteria are also suggested for coining CCS technology available and material with regard to commercial power generation. The study reveals some inherent limitations based on the perception that the energy system itself is so huge that it takes time to build the required human and industrial capacity, and to fill the knowledge gap. History suggests that 30 years or more are needed for a new energy technology to materialise . In order for CCS to have the desired impact on greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the process of materialising CCS must take place within just one decade. Hence, the implication is that broaching CCS into society within this short time span is – if practicable – an unprecedented challenge which requires war-like actions.

A technical evaluation of CO2 capture technologies when retrofitted to a cement plant is performed. The investigated technologies are the oxyfuel process, the chilled ammonia process, membrane-assisted CO2 liquefaction, and the calcium looping process with tail-end and integrated configurations. For comparison, absorption with monoethanolamine (MEA) is used as reference technology. The focus of the evaluation is on emission abatement, energy performance, and retrofitability. All the investigated technologies perform better than the reference both in terms of emission abatement and energy consumption. The equivalent CO2 avoided are 73–90%, while it is 64% for MEA, considering the average EU-28 electricity mix. The specific primary energy consumption for CO2 avoided is 1.63–4.07 MJ/kg CO2, compared to 7.08 MJ/kg CO2 for MEA. The calcium looping technologies have the highest emission abatement potential, while the oxyfuel process has the best energy performance. When it comes to retrofitability, the post-combustion technologies show significant advantages compared to the oxyfuel and to the integrated calcium looping technologies. Furthermore, the performance of the individual technologies shows strong dependencies on site-specific and plant-specific factors. Therefore, rather than identifying one single best technology, it is emphasized that CO2 capture in the cement industry should be performed with a portfolio of capture technologies, where the preferred choice for each specific plant depends on local factors.