Sichuan has built the world's largest chemical chain combustion unit, and carbon capture is expected to be reduced by 50%.

The industrial application of domestic carbon capture has taken a key step.

Interface News learned that on September 20, the world's largest 3 MW chemical chain combustion (CLC) pilot plant was completed in Deyang, Sichuan. The unit captures high-purity carbon dioxide while producing steam and significantly reduces the energy and cost of carbon capture.

The device was designed by Dongfang Electric Group Dongfang Boiler Co., Ltd. in conjunction with Tsinghua University, Total Energy and the French Petroleum Research Institute.

"The current cost of carbon capture is about $100/tonne, and our goal is to reduce that to $50/tonne." Principal Energy's chief technology officer Mingyang said in an interview with Interface News and other media.

Total said that the completion of the CLC pilot plant means that the industrial application of chemical chain combustion carbon capture technology has been a key step.

Chemical chain combustion is a new low-cost carbon capture technology that can significantly reduce the cost of capturing carbon dioxide produced during industrial combustion, and promote the goal of emission reduction and decarbonization.

Carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) is a key core technology to combat climate change, and it is also a emission reduction technology that can realize the large-scale low-carbon utilization of fossil energy.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has pointed out that without CCUS technology, almost all climate models will not achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, and the global cost of carbon reduction will multiply.

According to the IEA's Net Zero Scenario Outlook, global annual CCUS demand will reach 6 billion tonnes by 2050. Currently, the global carbon capture is 40 million tons per year. There is a general consensus in the industry that investment in the CCUS value chain must be strengthened to help achieve carbon neutrality.

However, the cost is too high, which seriously restricts further investment in CCUS projects. Among them, carbon capture is the most expensive link in CCUS projects, generally accounting for 60%-80% of the total project cost, and is also a key factor affecting its industrialization and commercialization.

According to the classification of carbon dioxide separation methods, the main technologies of carbon capture include chemical absorption method, physical absorption method, chemical/physical absorption method, membrane separation method and chemical chain separation method.

According to Total Energies, the main feature of CLC technology is the ability to maintain high energy efficiency while separating carbon dioxide.

According to data provided by the EU-China Pollutant Emission Reduction Technology Research Project Group (CHEERS), CLC technology can achieve carbon capture rates of up to 96%; When separating CO2, high electrical efficiencies of more than 38% can be achieved, which means that the energy loss of CO2 can be reduced to as little as 4%.

The CHEERS project is jointly funded by Horizon 2020 and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, with the participation of Total Energy and Oriental Boiler Group Co., Ltd. Total Energy is involved in the development and management of key technologies and projects. The project was launched in October 2017 and the future mature CLC technology is expected to be applied on an industrial scale in the refining industry and the power industry.

Liang Xi, deputy director of the CCUS Special Committee of the Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences, and others have published an article saying that the cost of carbon capture is inversely proportional to the concentration of carbon dioxide, and the cost of carbon dioxide capture in different production processes varies greatly.

In the petrochemical industry, the cost of capturing CO2 is US$10-91/tonne; The concentration of carbon dioxide in flue gas and exhaust gas produced by the steel, cement and power generation industries is relatively low, and the capture cost is high, which is 40-124 US dollars / ton, 43-120 US dollars / ton and 50-117 US dollars / ton, respectively.

The completion of the Deyang CLC pilot plant will help reduce the cost of carbon capture in oil refining, power and other fields.

Si Mingyang said that after the operation of the Deyang 3 MW plant, the project needs to carry out a larger industrial demonstration in the future and eventually achieve commercial operation.

"To achieve commercial operation, the CLC plant needs to reach a scale of 200 megawatts. The commercialization of the project is expected to be completed by 2030. Si Mingyang said.

Xu Zhonghua, vice president of Total Energy Asia, said that in addition to technical obstacles, in order to achieve the commercialization of CCUS, appropriate policy support is needed, such as the development of carbon markets and the inclusion of CCUS in the carbon trading system.

In the world's major carbon markets, the EU occupies an absolute dominant position in terms of both trading volume and trading volume. In 2022, the EU traded 9.277 billion tonnes of carbon, accounting for 75% of the total traded; The transaction volume was 5.5 trillion yuan, accounting for 87% of the total transaction volume.

Although China's national carbon market is the carbon market with the largest carbon footprint in the global carbon market, it is not yet active. In 2022, the total amount of carbon trading in the domestic carbon market will be 50.8895 million tons, with a total transaction volume of 2.814 billion yuan.

Simingyang and Xu Zhonghua believe that a better policy environment and more transparent information are needed to promote carbon trading.

The relevant person in charge of the Department of Climate Change of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment has publicly stated that on the basis of the smooth operation of the carbon market, the industry coverage of the national carbon market will be gradually expanded, and the trading entities, trading varieties and trading methods will be enriched.

Oil companies such as Total Energies, Shell, ExxonMobil, PetroChina, and Sinopec are actively exploring the industrialization and commercialization of CCUS projects.

Total plans to store more than 10 million tons of carbon dioxide per year by 2030 in various ways. Last year, Total Energy invested about $100 million in the sector, and since then plans to invest $300 million a year.

In 2022, PetroChina implemented a number of CCUS projects, with the annual injection volume of carbon dioxide exceeding 1.1 million tons; In January this year, Sinopec's million-ton CCUS project was fully completed and put into operation, becoming the largest CCUS industry chain demonstration base in China and the first million-ton CCUS project in China.

In June, CNOOC announced that China's first offshore carbon dioxide storage (CCS) demonstration project was officially put into operation.