Performance assessment of offshore wind energy integrated monoethanolamine synthesis system for post-combustion and potential direct air capture

Steady growth in global energy demand is increasing the utilization of fossil fuels that are instigating enormous environmental problems and global temperature rise. The scientific community is not only directing the efforts to a global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy but also to capture CO2 emissions from the industrial flue gases, atmospheric air and seawater through negative emissions technologies (NETs) to limit the average global temperature rise to 1.5°C by 2050. Many of the dominant engineered CO2 capturing techniques, including pre-commercialized point-source CO2 capture and some lab-scale direct air capture (DAC) technologies, employ monoethanolamine (MEA) as an absorbent to capture CO2. DAC and carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technologies are imperative R&D topics and offer some commercial prospects going forward as rising carbon pricing is established. For CCUS and DAC to contribute, however, considerable low-carbon energy must be deployed in addition to that required for decarbonization. Thus, we propose a novel off-grid offshore wind energy-driven hydrogen production system for MEA synthesis onshore to enable post-combustion CO2 capture and DAC scale-up. The key focus of this design system is to synthesize MEA using offshore wind energy that does not compete with grid-connected offshore wind as later is required for electrification efforts alongside grid-connection generation decarbonization. The designed system produces 8.7 kt/yr of monoethanolamine, 2.75 kt/yr of diethanolamine and 0.47 kt/yr of triethanolamine from an assumed 20 MW offshore wind capacity. The amines synthesized by the designed system have widespread applications in the CCUS technologies and it can also be scaled up depending upon the required capacity and this will eventually help in mitigating the CO2 emissions and on the path to net-zero emissions by 2050.