Volume 31: Clean Energy Technologies towards Carbon Neutrality

Analysis on temperature swing adsorption for carbon capture integrated with heat pump technologies L. Jiang, W. Liu, R.Q. Wang, X.J. Zhang

Abstract

Carbon capture is gathering the momentum to achieve the target of carbon neutrality. However, common carbon capture technology e.g. absorption technology has a very high regeneration energy which leads to the loss of thermal efficiency when retrofitting for the plant. This paper initially proposes a general concept of sorption carbon capture technology with heat pump and explore the performance of adsorption carbon capture integrated with compression heat pump as a case study. Activated carbon is selected as the adsorbent for temperature swing adsorption (TSA). Results indicates that theoretical exergy efficiency of 4-step TSA cycle ranges from 0.05 to 0.16 at different adsorption and desorption temperatures. Net efficiencies of coal-fired plant using adsorption capture technologies range from 35.1% to 35.4% when desorption temperature rises from 50oC to 70oC. Also levelized cost of electricity of coal-fired plant using activated carbon ranges from 50.5 USD·MWh-1 to 50.9 USD·MWh-1 which has a marginal increase at different desorption temperatures. The result is about 6% lower than that using Monoethanolamine. It is demonstrated that adsorption capture for coal-fired plant may be a promising solution to reduce the energy consumption in the near future.

Keywords carbon capture, adsorption, regeneration energy, heat pump