Benchmarking of a Membrane Technology for Tail-end Application in a Cement Plant

The work presented in this paper is related to assessment and benchmarking of a MOF based membrane technology for application of carbon capture in a cement plant and has been conducted in the ongoing H2020 project GENESIS Two alternatives for a two-stage membrane-based process were established and simulated in Aspen Plus while a generic crossflow model of the membrane was developed and implemented in Aspen Custom Modeler. As a reference case for the benchmarking a conventional absorber/stripper configuration with 30wt% MEA as solvent was used. For the cost calculation the Aspen In Plant Cost Estimator (AIPCE) tool combined with an in-house tool were used and the assessment criteria were the Specific Primary Energy Consumption for CO2 Avoided (SPECCA) and the cost of CO2 avoided. The determined SPECCA for both the membrane alternatives are similar, but approximately half of the SPECCA for the reference case. Since the cost of the membrane is highly uncertain, a sensitivity analysis was performed, but it turned out that only one of the membrane process alternatives with the lowest membrane cost outperforms the reference case related to avoided cost. Though the OPEX costs are promising for four of the membrane cases, capital costs are high for all membrane cases. These results are based on a specification of 90% capture rate and at least 95% purity of the separated CO2.