CO2 Capture: Enabling Research and Technology

The NTNU and SINTEF team behind this proposal comprises strong and renowned groups within CO2 capture that are among the most active and productive in the world, also on the fundamental side. We see that what is presently needed in order to achieve real p rogress, is a formidable collaborative and united effort, internationally oriented, focused on discrete areas but with interaction across boundaries, aimed at the development of fundamental theories and principles that will enable future step changes in c apture technology. The proposed Project for CO2 Capture will focus on this need and we will strive to become the number one CO2 capture research environment in the world. CO2 capture has three primary application areas: Capture of excess CO2 from natural gas streams, CO2 capture from thermal power generation processes, and CO2 capture from industrial processes such as steel plants, lime kilns, cement plants, and ammonia plants. The project will, however, have particular emphasis on natural gas based powe r production. This implies that CO2 capture thermally integrated with combustion and power generation will be one major research area, and here the capture processes must be carried out at elevated temperatures. In other cases CO2 capture does not have to be thermally integrated with a combustion process, so the constraints of high temperature operation may be relaxed, and other materials and processing principles will be applicable. We therefore find it useful to distinguish between high-temperature capt ure (HTC) and low-temperature capture (LTC). Generic activities, dealing with common issues for the two areas, such as control technology, dynamics, process design and optimization methodologies, are by nature related to integrating the disciplines, and a re here grouped into Process Science. Further, there will be common fundamental activities in thermodynamics, membrane science, combustion, computational chemistry and systems theory.