Membrane Technology for
Post-Combustion Carbon Capture from Coal-Fired Power Plants
Group 2: Tim Becker, Hye-In Son, Angel Asante, Nadeeka Karunaratne
- Although the cost of CO2 capture can be reduced by selecting membranes with high permeability’s, current commercial membrane gas separation units are quite expensive.
- The cost of commercial membranes ranges from $500/m2 to $750/m2, which makes it difficult for this type of technology to be cost-competitive. (Baker et al 2010)
Besides the membrane properties the Investment Costs are strongly affected by the membrane price. The diagram shows the relationship between the membrane facilities price, the permeance and the Cost of Carbon Capture as investigated by Zhai and Rubin. As expected both the increase of permeance and the reduction of membrane price make Carbon Capture with membranes more affordable. Also it is possible to see that the price is less important for higher permeances, because less area is required. Still for recently developed membranes with permeabilities in the range of 1500 gpu (or lower) the price plays a very important role for the Cost Calculation.
MEMBRANE PRICE
The Cost of CO2 Avoided is a unit which quantifies the levelized cost avoiding a ton of atmospheric CO2 emissions while still providing a unit of electricity to customers.
COE := Cost of Electricity
ER := CO2 Emission intensity
Zhai et al (2013)