Results of the CO2 Capture Demonstration Facility at EDF’s Le Havre Power Plant: Status of ALSTOM’s Advanced Amines Process

摘要

Since CO2 capture technologies have been identified as one measure (in an overall portfolio) to mitigate global CO2 emissions, a variety of CO2 capture technologies have been/are being developed by several European and other global suppliers. Many of these development programs rely on collaboration with utility companies, universities, and government agencies. A promising, post-combustion solution based on chemical absorption is the Advanced Amine Process (AAP), jointly developed by ALSTOM and the Dow Chemical Company and recently tested in an Advanced Flow Scheme (AFS) set-up at EDF’s Le Havre power plant for 6 months. This set-up is a new small demonstration facility designed to capture 25 tonnes of CO2/day at a 90% capture rate on a flue gas slip stream from a hard coal-fired power plant located in Le Havre, Normandy, France. It has been designed, constructed, commissioned and underwent testing through a partnership between ALSTOM and électricité de France (EDF) with support from ADEME, the French Environment and Energy Management Agency, between the beginning of 2010 and the beginning of 2014. In the Le Havre pilot, the Advanced Flow Scheme is implemented: it is the latest generation of the AAP scheme. UCARSOLTM FGC 3000, a solvent developed by DOW was used. The Le Havre CO2 capture pilot plant is a “catch and release”: the produced CO2 is send back to the stack. The test campaign consisted of several series of tests. Varied ratio of liquid to gas flow rates with 90% CO2 removal, the effect of varying process conditions at a given solvent circulation rate, and the effect of different absorber process conditions on energy consumption were investigated. In addition to energy performance, the degradation of amine and the effectiveness of the O2 stripper at decreasing the rate of degradation of the amine solvent were investigated. The operation of the amine reclaimer was also validated. Testing was concluded mid-March 2014: at the time of writing this paper many data sets are still under review. Key results on energy performance and solvent management as well as on emissions are nonetheless presented in the present paper. Finally, some lessons learned are put forward, illustrating some achievements as well as issues on operating such a CO2 capture pilot plant.