Operability-economics trade-offs in adsorption-based CO2 capture processes

Abstract Dispatchable low-carbon power underpins the transition to a sustainable energy system, providing balancing load for the integration of intermittent renewable power. In such load-following operation, the post-combustion carbon capture process must be capable of highly transient operation. Here we have developed a computational framework that integrates process design, operability and techno-economic assessment of a pressure-vacuum swing adsorption process for CO2 capture. We demonstrate that the cost-optimal design has limited process flexibility, challenging reactiveness to disturbances in the flue gas conditions. Flexibility can be introduced by relaxing the CO2 recovery constraint on the operation, albeit at the expense of the capture efficiency of the process. We discover that adsorption-based processes can be designed to enhance flexibility, while improving performance with respect to the operational constraints on CO2 recovery and purity. The results herein demonstrate a trade-off between process economics and process operability, which must be rationalised to integrate CO2 capture units in low-carbon energy systems.