Carbon Dioxide Capture

CO2 capture is the process of removing CO2 (carbon dioxide) produced by hydrocarbon combustion (coal, oil and gas) before it enters the atmosphere. The process will be most cost effective when it is used on large point sources of CO2 such as power stations and industrial plants. These currently make up more than half of all man-made CO2 emissions.

CO2 capture is an existing industrial technology widely used, on a smaller scale, in the manufacture of fertilizers, the food-processing industry and within the oil and gas sector. The main challenge for any capture process is the low concentration of CO2 in the flue gas. Depending on the industrial source CO2 content can vary from a few percent to well over fifty percent. Other contaminant gases such as oxygen, sulphur oxides, water vapour and nitrogen can also be present in flue gases. For reasons of both economic and energy costs it would be impossible to compress and store all of them. Therefore CO2 must be preferentially separated from the other flue gases by a capturing process.

There are currently three main methods of capturing CO2:

• Post-combustion capture
• Pre-combustion capture
• Oxy-fuel combustion capture

• Read more about current research into Carbon Capture processes