Proceedings of Materials for Sustainable Development Conference (MAT-SUS) (NFM22)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.nfm.2022.067
Publication date: 11th July 2022
One promising technology to decarbonise our economy is to use carbon dioxide (CO2) from a point source or air as a starting feedstock to produce chemicals, while leveraging the rapidly-growing renewable energy as a driving force. Such an approach relies traditionally relies on separate capture and conversion processes. Both processes are energy costly and face their own technical challenges. For example, amine-based capture media requires a typical cost of US$50-150 to capture one tonne of CO2. The recovery of capture media (e.g., amines) and CO2 cost up to 90% of the overall energy for the capture process. Meanwhile, CO2 conversion by electrochemical processes takes substantial energy for the conversion, separation and electrolyte recovery steps.
As a means to reduce energy input and reduce implementation costs, coupling the capture and electrolysis conversions steps into an integrated process has been proposed. Here the conversion process uses the CO2-saturated capture media, instead of free gaseous CO2. The new integrated CO2 electrolysis process can then theoretically displace the energy-intensive amine regeneration of the capture and produce valuable chemicals (e.g., carbon monoxide) to offset the overall carbon abatement cost. However, at present the integrated electrolysers shows inferior performance to the gas-fed electrolysers. Hence, an important question needs to be answered: will the integrated capture and conversion route fulfill its promise to be more energy-efficient than the sequential route?
This talk attempts to answer this question by discussing our recent process energy system modelling results.[1] Firstly, our results find that the electrochemical CO2 conversion is the dominant energy contributor to the overall capture and conversion, and its energy cost must be minimized. If the integrated electrolysis process is of the same energy cost to the state-of-the-art gas-fed electrolyser, the integrated route could then save up to 42% energy as compared to sequential capture and conversion steps. However, this energy advantage quickly diminishes if future gas-fed electrolyser remains more energy efficient, or if bicarbonate formation in the gas-fed system is avoided. This talk will conclude with challenges and opportunities for the development of integrated capture and electrolysis.
T.B. and M.L. would like to acknowledge the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 85144 (SELECT-CO2)
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