As the global natural gas industry accelerates its efforts towards emissions and carbon footprint reduction, carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) plays a key role on this path. In fact, what was once considered a waste emission stream is now emerging as a feed stream for CO2 capture, purification and handling processes. Consequently, CCUS facilities are increasingly essential either as an additional part of any industrial plant or as stand‐alone facilities (i.e. hubs) purposely designed to collect, treat, store and utilize/dispose the CO2‐rich streams from different sources as the primary feedstock.
Due to the nature of the emissions and sources, such as but not limited to post combustion power plants, pre‐combustion gas treatment plants, ammonia/urea production plants, etc., the composition of CO2‐rich streams could vary significantly depending on emitters. Consequently, the CO2‐rich streams resulting from the first capture steps may contain dissimilar amounts of different impurities. Such impurities affect the physical behaviour and properties of the CO2‐rich streams and, therefore, have different implications in the process design. In addition, since the concentrations of such species are often a result of co‐absorption or slip phenomena from upstream processes, they are typically not fixed parameters, but rather vary within ranges, requiring the process design to account for wider envelopes.
Therefore, understanding the effects of impurities over the operating and compositional envelope of the CO2‐rich streams becomes of the utmost importance to achieve a robust and flexible design of CO2 handling facilities. Many process and engineering design choices, together with their subsequent CAPEX impact, are driven by this specific issue.
Using case studies based on the EPC Contractor experience gained in executing several CCUS projects, this paper presents a thorough analysis of the impurities in post capture CO2‐rich streams and their effect on the fluid behavior and properties, with a specific focus on the relevant implications on process design considerations for CO2 handling systems relevant to:
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