Impact of Emissions Mitigation Technologies on the Costs of a CO₂ Capture Plant for a Generic Refinery Process Flue Gas

Carbon capture is a necessary tool to support the energy transition and help companies and countries reach their climate targets. Amine-based absorption is the most mature technology for postcombustion carbon capture. Understanding solvent behavior in relation to degradation and emissions is crucial for the implementation of such a process. However, this task proved to be extremely difficult as the behavior is dependent on several factors, including the solvent formulation, the flue gas composition, the capture rate, and the reboiler temperature, to cite some. This work investigates the impacts of a few selected technologies to handle emissions on the costs of implementing a capture plant in a refinery. The cases were evaluated using two solvents, 30 wt % MEA and CESAR1, where simulations were conducted to assess the process performance and size of the main plant equipment. A cost methodology was used to compare the cases where it shows that the configuration with water wash, dry bed, and acid wash was the most technically and economically efficient. Using the proposed methodology shows that operating the capture plant with CESAR1 is more economical than with 30 wt % MEA mainly due to the difference in regeneration costs (i.e., steam costs).