Design Evaluation of CO2 Capture Processes for EOR Application

Global warming is a universal issue due to the continuous rise of greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere. Unless we do something to reduce the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere, the world will experience the effects of climate change. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is thought to be a key technology which can enable the power sector to keep using fossil fuel resources while minimizing their effect on climate change. CCS mainly consists of capturing CO2 from large emitting sources and its transportation to a sequestration site where it can be stored safely for a long period of time. There are three main CO2 capture systems associated with different combustion processes, namely, post-combustion, pre-combustion and oxyfuel combustion. This project will comprise of mainly two parts: CO2 capture system and CO2 transport. The first part of project proposes the technical and economic assessment of two CO2 capture systems namely, a conventional post combustion capture unit for pulverized coal plant and CO2 capture system for an integrated gasification combined cycle power plant. The project will investigate the key CO2 emission sources operating in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and design the required CO2 capture system for the facilities. The detailed modelling and simulation will be performed for the post-combustion and pre-combustion systems that can be generically applicable to the key sources with none or slight modifications. Process integration and process design alternatives will be investigated to improve the overall efficiency and decrease the cost of the plant. The project also plans to validate the model with available existing facilities data. In case of absence or unavailability of plant data, literature data may be used to validate the simulation models. The project results will be useful to check the feasibility of a new project or a retrofit before a detailed design is made. The second part of the project proposes the design of CO2 pipeline transport suitable for the Saudi Arabian environmental conditions. This part will focus on the pipeline design and various CO2 transport conditions that can result in optimum energy. Since, compression energy is one of the main factor in CO2 transport, optimum compression design is required. Based on the pipeline model, compression stage process design will be made and optimized to offer the least energy consumption. CO2 transport system will also address the effect of various impurities present in the CO2 stream and their control system. Specially, dehydration unit for the water removal will be designed to safely transportation of CO2. The results will be valuable for the fore coming large scale CO2 transport projects in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, especially for enhanced oil recovery purposes