SCARLET - Scale-up of Calcium Carbonate Looping Technology for Efficient CO2 Capture from Power and Industrial Plants

 

Winter 2016


Calcium Carbonate Looping (CCL) is a highly efficient post-combustion CO2 capture technology utilizing limestone based sorbents (see Fig.1). CCL is particularly suited for retrofitting power plants as well as industrial plants (cement, steel, etc.). For power plant applications, CCL combines low net efficiency penalties of 5-7 %-points (incl. CO2 compression) with low CO2 avoidance costs below 30 €/tCO2. The feasibility of CCL has been proven by various pilot plants.

The SCARLET project aims to bring CCL to the next level of maturity by obtaining reliable information and tools for scale-up of the technology, including the following activities:

  • Pilot testing at 1 MWth scale
  • Development of scale-up tools
  • Engineering for a 20 MWth pilot plant
  • Techno-economic/environmental assessment for power,cement, steel sector

A highly qualified consortium consisting of academic partners (Technische Universität Darmstadt, University of Ulster, CERTH), technology providers (GE Carbon Capture, Steinmüller Babcock Environment, Lhoist, SWR Engineering) and end users (Uniper, RWE, ArcelorMittal, CEMEX) provides the expertise that is required for successful scale-up of the CCL technology.

Four long-term pilot tests (4 weeks each, 24/7) have been performed at the 1 MWth pilot plant at TU Darmstadt (see Fig. 2). CO2 was continuously captured for more than 1,200 hours from coal originated flue gas under a wide range of conditions. Overall CO2 capture efficiencies up to 97% were achieved proving the high potential of the process.

Scale-up tools have been developed and validated against experimental data of the pilot tests. These include a steadystate process model for heat and mass balance, a dynamic process model for flexibility evaluation as well as various Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approaches for 3D reactor simulation of fluidized bed reactors.

A 20 MWth pilot plant will most probably be next step towards full-scale demonstration of CCL technology. The basic design and engineering of such a pilot plant are carried out considering UNIPER’s Emile Huchet (France) hard coal power plant as the host site. Health and safety analysis as well as technical risk assessment are conducted for this pilot plant.

The full-scale integration of CCL into various power (hard coal, lignite) and industrial (cement, steel) plants is assessed for selected host sites of the industrial partners. Heat and mass balances for various retrofit scenarios are established to determine the energy requirements as well as CO2 avoidance costs. The environmental impact of the technology is assessed by life cycle analysis (LCA).

Save the Date! – The 2nd Public Workshop will take place on 23rd March 2017 at Technische Universität Darmstadt presenting the final results of the SCARLET project. There will be the possibility to visit the CCL pilot plant. The workshop will be free of charge. Registration can be made via email.


This project is funded by the European Union's 7th Framework Programme under grant agreement no. 608578.

Contact details:
www.project-scarlet.eu
Email: info@project-scarlet.eu