This report constitutes deliverable D4.10 of the C4U project: Life cycle assessment of capture technologies. It is related to task 4.3.1 where the goal is to quantify the environmental impact of an industrial implementation of the C4U carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies. As a first step towards that goal, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used to assess the impact of the pilot implementations of the DISPLACE and CASOH C4U technologies at the technology readiness level (TRL) 7.
The results were used to identify environmental hotspots at an early stage of the project and support the development of the technologies. The model developed here is also a stepping stone for future deliverables D4.11 and 4.12. This LCA is preliminary due to the limited data available to build the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and the fact that pilots studied here are not optimized yet. The results and conclusions should be interpreted with care and within the larger context of the C4U project.
It was shown that the electricity consumption, the provision of cooling energy, and the steam supply were the main contributors to the environmental impacts of the CASOH and DISPLACE pilots. Most of the electricity consumed by the pilots was used for heating various gases at different stages. These three items should be focal points for optimization and mitigation when upscaling to the industrial TRL. The CASOH emissions can be reduced significantly by removing or optimizing the heat removal stages. Further benefits can be achieved by recovering and reusing the excess heat and the H2-rich output stream.
Finally, the work conducted for this deliverable highlighted the importance of establishing a robust data exchange protocol in the future. D4.11 will be used to that end and build upon the knowledge acquired here to facilitate future communication. D4.11 will also clarify the methodology used for upscaling the inventory from the TRL7 presented here to the industrial scale. The LCA work will come to completion with D4.12, which will show the true potential of the C4U capture technologies.
Contributors: Thomas Hennequin, Rosalie van Zelm (SKU)
Reviewer: Jebin James (TNO)
