Modularization & Intensification of Carbon Capture Technologies

Carbon capture technologies that capture CO₂ from point sources such as power plants, refineries, and chemical plants or distributed and typically low concentration sources like the atmosphere are being advanced as part of a comprehensive carbon management system. Fundamentally, there are three pathways to capture point source generated CO₂. They depend on when and how the CO₂ is captured in the combustion process: pre-combustion, post-combustion, and oxy-fuel combustion carbon capture. These processes have been scaled up to minimize the energy required for releasing the CO₂ and for operations including pipeline compression of CO₂. Such point source capture technologies have demonstrated improvements in energy efficiency through the integration of processes and more recently by application of intensification methods. On the other hand, direct air capture (DAC) methods involve low concentration streams, are intrinsically smaller scale, and are distributed. DAC proves economical when adopting passive technologies to capture CO₂. In this presentation, we will provide techno-economic analysis of existing DAC technologies and life cycle analysis to understand the efficacy of these methods to reduce the global carbon footprint. We will also discuss the technical opportunities to modularize and intensify such distributed capture technologies to address energy consumption, high capex costs, and integration of renewable energy sources to provide an alternate pathway for rapid penetration of carbon capture technologies.