New capture process promises cheaper CCS

If we are to achieve international climate goals, CO₂ capture and storage must be adopted on a large scale worldwide. The technology for this exists, but intensive development work is under way to make it cheaper and more efficient.

Moving Bed Temperature Swing Adsorption

Richard Blom from SINTEF has been the project leader of the EDeMoTec project, which has further developed an interesting process for CO₂ capture. The process is known as Moving Bed Temperature Swing Adsorption (MBTSA). This is a process in which flue gas containing CO₂ first comes into contact with solids, known as adsorbents, which can bind to the CO₂. In the next process step, the adsorbent is heated to release the CO₂. This produces pure CO₂ that can be permanently stored. One of the main issues for the MBTSA process is to achieve a high degree of purity of the separated CO₂ gas.

One challenge is to choose adsorbents that are both effective and stable, and this is where Blom and his team have achieved interesting results. Several types of materials have been studied, and some prove to be more effective and stable than others. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and zeolites have yielded very promising results.

A competitive solution

The EDeMoTec project, funded by CLIMIT, has enabled the researchers to run the necessary process simulations and a comprehensive testing programme. The results show that the process could be a competitive solution for CO₂ capture from gas-fired power plants and waste incineration plants, for example.

The MBTSA process will now be further developed in the Horizon 2020 project MOF4AIR. Richard Blom and his team are also working with industry players to optimise the process.