Defining CCS Ready: An Approach to An International Definition

Appendix B: Technology Design Options for a Capture Ready Plantcombustion and the carbonate reaction, thus increasing the CO 2 concentration. It alsotypically has a high dust loading, as well as other contaminants from the combustionincluding SO 2 and NO x , and potentially others depending on the fuel. All of thesecontaminants would likely create problems for a CO 2 removal system.In locations with aggressive pollution control requirements, dust removal would likely be inplace already, and lower-sulfur fuel would be required, though possibly not to the levelrequired for a CO 2 capture system. NO x controls are less common. In regions with lessrigorous emission controls, the emissions might not be limited at all. This would probablyrequire significant additional investment in gas cleanup prior to the CO 2 capture system.There are some natural-gas-fired cement kilns, which would require less cleanup dependingon the tolerance of the CO 2 system.The other important consideration is that cement and lime manufacturing facilities do notrequire steam, and typically do not have boilers. If the CO 2 capture system requires steam,then a boiler and associated infrastructure would need to be installed at the site. Onealternative possibility would be to recover heat from the hot kiln exhaust to raise steam forthe CO 2 capture system; however a heat balance would need to be performed to seewhether this would be adequate. While this would avoid the cost of fuel, it would still be asignificant additional cost for the system.Oxy-fuel combustion might be another alternative, but could be challenging for severalreasons. First, it would be a very large additional operating expense for a product/businessthat has a very low margin and a high sensitivity to operating cost. Second, the kilns typicallyoperate with a very large amount of excess combustion air. Reducing the mass flow ofcombustion gas could require a significant redesign of the process and preclude retrofitapplications. That said, a major redesign of the calcining process could be a future approachto reducing the CO 2 from this important industry.B.4.3 Standard CombustionCCS from standard combustion in the industrial sector will likely rely on the sametechnologies available to the power sector (discussed above). The major differences willhave to do with the differences in facility configuration between typically industrial andpower generation facilities, including:Size: Industrial combustors are typically much smaller than those for power generators. Anindustrial boiler with a heat input of over 100 MMBtu/hour is considered to be relativelylarge, yet this corresponds to a power plant boiler providing only 10 MW of power. Thereare very few industrial combustors as big as the boiler for a 100 MW power plant, whichwould be considered small for economic application of CCS. Some industrial facilities mayhave a large number of combustors, which in aggregate amount to a significant flow ofexhaust gas. However, bringing these streams together for processing could be mechanicallydifficult and expensive. The other implication of small size is the high cost of providing fortransport of the captured CO 2 to a storage facility. The cost of building a pipeline for a smallCO 2 volume would be very high on a per metric ton basis. In some cases, where there aremultiple facilities in one region, there could be the potential to aggregate the captured CO 2 .23 February 2010 98