Climate Impact on CO2 Capture Efficiency and Levelized Cost of Liquid solvent-based DAC(Direct Air Capture) System
ayesha iqbal
Authors
Keju An, Azharuddin Farooqui, Sean T. McCoy
Citation: Keju An, Azharuddin Farooqui, Sean T. McCoy, The impact of climate on solvent-based direct air capture systems, Applied Energy, Volume 325, 2022, 119895, ISSN 0306-2619,
Proceedings of the 16th Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies Conference (GHGT-16) 23-24 Oct 2022
Posted: 12 Dec 2022
Abstract
The transition towards net-zero emission poses economic, technical, and political challenges for the commercial-scale deployment of CO2 removal technologies by 2050. The opportunities for large-scale deployment will largely depend on the distinctive conditions found in the different locations of the world such as energy cost, carbon intensity of energy source, construction, transportation, and weather conditions. In this work, we focus on one of the promising negative emission technology, DAC(Direct Air Capture), and its response to different weather conditions. This work presents two potential operation scenarios: (i) natural gas standalone, (ii) grid electricity connected DAC plant. For the first time, we investigated the influence of temperature and RH (relative humidity) of the air on liquid-based DAC system and its response to carbon capture efficiency and levelized cost of carbon capture with operational sensitivity analysis. It is observed that the overall energy demand decreases from 11.1 to 8.3 GJ/ton-CO2 as the CO2 capture rate increases from 40 to 85%. We observed that a CO2 capture rate of 75% is only possible above 17℃ even at 90% RH and this drops tremendously at lower temperatures. It is also observed that water evaporation in the air contactor is highest at dry and low RH as expected. The sensitivity analysis showed that weather conditions are insensitive to CO2 capture efficiency for the liquid-solvent based DAC plant for both scenarios. In addition, higher CO2 capture efficiency is achievable from lower upstream methane emissions and carbon intensity of grid electricity (for grid-connected scenario). Lastly, the levelized cost of natural gas standalone scenario varies from 239.7 to 408.8 $/t-CO2 is sensitive to temperature conditions more than relative humidity and compared to electricity grid-connected scenario, from 265.3 to 440.1 $/t-CO2.
Keywords: Direct Air Capture, Climate Impact, Capture Efficiency, Levelized Cost
Source: SSRN