【Ten Years of Great Progress in Chemical Technology】China’s First 1,000-ton “phase-change” carbon dioxide capture industrial facility from 2015 to 2020

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Ten years of rapid development in chemical engineering technology – praise for China’s prosperity and strength. This is just a starting point; more participation from everyone will make things even more lively. HaiChuan becomes even better with your involvement; we welcome everyone to take part more actively in the forum discussions. Be careful with fire risks as the heat increases in July. ********************************************* In November 2020, China’s first industrial facility for capturing carbon dioxide on a scale of 1,000 tons per year using the “phase-change” method was developed by the Clean Energy Technology Research Institute of China Huaneng Group. This facility was able to operate continuously and stably for 72 hours at the Huaneng Changchun Thermal Power Plant. Experts confirmed that this technology is at the international leading level. “The \"phase-change\" carbon dioxide capture technology belongs to the next generation of transformative carbon capture technologies. It effectively solves the problem of high energy consumption associated with the need to heat and regenerate the carbon dioxide absorption liquid in traditional methods, thereby significantly reducing the costs of carbon dioxide capture and bringing substantial social and economic benefits. Within the overall cost of carbon capture and storage, the capture phase accounts for as much as 80% of this cost, largely due to the high energy consumption associated with the heating and regeneration processes of the absorbents. The chemically absorption method, which is widely used today, requires that the absorbent be heated and regenerated after absorbing carbon dioxide in order to achieve the separation of carbon dioxide and the reuse of the absorbent. After absorbing carbon dioxide, the new type of phase-change absorbent automatically separates into a \"liquid-liquid\" layer system, with carbon dioxide concentrated in one of these layers; during regeneration, only the layer rich in carbon dioxide needs to be heated, thereby reducing overall costs. Expert validation data shows that phase-change carbon dioxide capture technology can reduce the amount of regeneration solution required by 40%-50%, with regeneration heat consumption below 2.3 GJ per ton of CO2, which is more than 45% lower than that of conventional ethanolamine absorbents. Taking a 1 million tons per year CO2 capture unit in a coal-fired power plant as an example, the Huaneng phase-change process can reduce steam heat consumption costs by 52.25 million yuan per year compared to the traditional MEA solution absorption method.