Commercially available CO2 capture technologies in 2022

Scientists all over the world have been working on many novel technologies that will be efficient, cost effective and can be applied in various process conditions for CO2 capture. I don't think we will find a single technique that will be a solution for all. It is widely accepted that we will be employing many techniques simultaneously to reach our goal of NetZero 2050 in addition to other low carbon fuels.

Figure 1 - What is the best CO2 capture technology.

What is the share of each technology on a commercial scale today? A technical report was issued by global CCS institute in May 2022, STATE OF THE ART: CCS TECHNOLOGIES 2022. Review of the report is summarized in a table below (Figure 3). Before discussing the summary, one should also understand different stages involved in evaluation of the technologies before bringing them for commercial use.

Figure 2 - Technology Readiness Levels

Technology readiness levels (TRLs) are a method used to evaluate the maturity levels of different technologies. It was originally developed by NASA in 1970. The US Department of Defense adopted in 2000 and European Commission adopted in 2010 onwards. It is not the scope of this article to explain the different levels in detail. The reader is encouraged to reference additional resources to learn more about TRLs. For the purposes of our discussion, we have 9 levels of TRLs. TRL 1 being the lowest that refers to “basic principles observed and initial concept”, the earliest stage of a technology development. TRL 9 is the highest which refers to “Normal Commercial Service” (Figure 2).

* - The project is still under construction

Figure 3 - Summary of commercially available technologies as of 2022

The table in Figure 3 is the summary of information on CO2 capture technologies that are commercially implemented in various plants all over the world. Upon review of the Table indicates that majority of the new CO2 capture technologies are in the middle levels of TRL scale. TRL 9 level processes are traditional amine-based processes, physical solvent-based processes, Pressure Swing and Vacuum Swing Adsorption (PSA and VSA) and membrane separation processes. The commercial deployment numbers in the last column of the table supports this conclusion. Honeywell AmineGuard process has been deployed in more than 600 locations worldwide, Benfield process in > 650 locations, BASF OASE >600 and Honeywell Separex in > 300 locations. All these commercial processes are one or the other variation of solvent based or adsorption-based technologies. Although lot of progress has been made, many of the technologies are still in evaluation stage.