New way! How does the CCUS Innovation Consortium promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries?

Recently, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council launched the construction of the third batch of central enterprise innovation consortiums, focusing on key areas such as strategic emerging industries and future industries, and supporting central enterprises to continue to build 3 and build 17 new innovation consortiums in the directions of industrial software, industrial mother machines, and new energy. Among them, PetroChina and China Huaneng jointly led the CCUS Innovation Consortium.

What problems can CCUS solve? Why should we establish a CCUS Innovation Consortium? What are the plans for the future? Our reporter interviewed the relevant person in charge of China Huaneng and its CCUS team members around the above issues.

Vigorously developing CCUS will help achieve carbon neutrality goals

At present, my country's resource endowment and energy structure are dominated by coal, with high carbon emission intensity and difficulty in reducing emissions. CCUS technology integrates multiple links such as carbon capture, transportation, utilization and storage, and can reduce carbon dioxide emissions on a large scale from the source and is of great significance for achieving the goal of carbon neutrality.

In the context of building a new energy system, the power system is required to significantly increase the proportion of renewable energy power. However, renewable energy is volatile, and its high proportion and large-scale access will inevitably cause significant uncertainties in the power system on the supply and consumer sides. Increase, which in turn affects the security and stability of the power system. Power systems dominated by renewable energy require support from energy storage and fossil energy.

Gao Shiwang, deputy chief engineer of China Huaneng Clean Energy Technology Research Institute, said that the combination of CCUS and efficient and flexible thermal power generation technology is an important means to ensure the flexibility of the power grid in the future. It can promote net-zero emissions in the power system, provide stable clean power, and balance renewable energy power generation. Volatility plays an important role in inertia support and frequency control in avoiding seasonal or long-term power shortages.

The International Energy Agency released the 2020 steel industry technology roadmap and pointed out that it is expected that by 2050, the steel industry will still have 34% of carbon emissions after adopting conventional emission reduction plans such as process improvement, efficiency improvement, and energy and raw material substitution. Hydrogen energy direct reduction of iron technology has made major breakthroughs, and remaining carbon emissions have also exceeded 8%. Similar situations include the cement industry. CCUS can become an effective technical means to achieve concentrated emission reduction of remaining carbon emissions.

The negative emission technology coupled by CCUS and new energy is the technical guarantee for achieving the goal of carbon neutrality. "Research shows that by 2060, my country will still have some greenhouse gas emissions that cannot be reduced and need to be offset by carbon sinks and negative emissions. Biomass-coupled CCUS technology (BECCS) and direct air capture (DAC) should be stored and deployed in advance. Negative emission technologies such as. Considering that my country has not yet launched a BECCS demonstration project, and the resource potential of biomass fuels is limited by multiple factors such as uneven spatial distribution, limited usable land area, and environmental policy constraints, we will focus on assessing the comprehensive effectiveness and potential risks of BECCS in mitigating climate change, and Carry out technical reserve and deployment planning for the large-scale implementation of BECCS in the future is a top priority." Gao Shiwang told reporters.

"In terms of promoting the development of new productive forces, the application of CCUS technology can promote the upgrading and transformation of traditional industries and promote the development of the industrial structure in a cleaner, efficient and sustainable direction." Gao Shiwang added.

Scientific and technological research and development and achievement transformation "two-pronged"

Among the earliest units in my country to carry out research and development and engineering demonstration of CCUS capture technology, China Huaneng is one of them.

It is understood that China Huaneng Group has taken the lead in formulating my country's first international standard in the field of carbon capture-ISO 27927 "Post-combustion CO₂Key Performance Indicators and Test Methods of Trapped Absorption Solutions ", achieving a" zero "breakthrough in international standard work in my country's carbon capture field. In July 2023, the invention patent of China Huaneng CCUS team "A Carbon Dioxide Capture System and Process for Multi-Stage Splitting Regeneration" won the Gold Medal of the 24th China Patent Award, and is currently the only patent gold medal in the CCUS field in China; The developed "A Carbon Dioxide Capture Solution Enhanced Regeneration System and Method" won the Gold Medal of Invention at the Geneva International Invention Exhibition held in April 2024.

In terms of promotion and application in important fields, China Huaneng CO₂Capture technology achievements have been used in CO production in coal-fired or gas-fired power plants in 16 countries including the United States, Canada, and Norway₂It has been applied in capture and storage projects and has won widespread international recognition.

In the past six years, under the leadership of Gao Shiwang, after thousands of simulations and repeated experiments, Gao Shiwang's team has explored an effective way to remove multiple pollutants in power plant flue gas at one time. In May 2021, a pilot project with near-zero emission of multiple pollutants successfully passed the acceptance at Huaneng Yueyang Power Plant. Subsequently, the world's first near-zero emission application demonstration of gas and coal-fired flue gas pollutants was built in 2022 and 2023 respectively, achieving a technological leap from "ultra-low emissions" to "near-zero emissions" of pollutants.

"COAP technology is the world's first and Huaneng's original comprehensive control technology for flue gas pollutants. It has the characteristics of new technical route, complete removal types, high removal efficiency, few secondary pollutants, high degree of resource utilization, and high comprehensive benefits. It can remove all kinds of pollutants at one time, achieving near-zero emissions." Dr. Wang Shiqing from the Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Department of China Huaneng Clean Energy Technology Research Institute said. This technology has successfully solved many problems existing in current desulfurization and denitrification technologies, such as continuous limestone excavation, desulfurization wastewater and ammonia escape and other secondary pollutant emissions. It is not only suitable for the treatment of flue gas pollutants from coal-fired units, but also can be used in many fields such as waste incineration, biomass power stations, steel and cement industry kilns, and chemical tail gas control and emission. Huaneng COAP technology will be rated as one of the five scientific and technological achievements "Facing Major National Needs" by the Zhongguancun Forum in 2023.

in CO₂In terms of utilization, Gao Shiwang introduced that CO₂It can be injected into the oil field to displace crude oil from the reservoir to produce it. using CO₂Conducting enhanced oil extraction (EOR) is the key to achieving CO₂One of the most effective ways to economic storage can also effectively improve oil recovery, especially for low-grade oil resources. Oil and gas production can increase by more than 10%-20% on average, and it is feasible to operate.

At the same time, CO₂Geological storage of saltwater layers can also be carried out. Captured CO is extracted through engineering technology₂It is stored in geological structures to achieve long-term isolation from the atmosphere. Deep saltwater CO₂Geological sequestration is essentially equivalent to searching for or creating an underground "artificial gas reservoir" in underground space, reversing CO₂Inject into suitable geological structures for long-term storage, thereby achieving the goal of carbon reduction.

In addition, in the construction field, CO₂It can be used to make certain building materials, such as concrete, to remove CO through mineralization.₂Permanently fixed in building materials; in agriculture, using CO₂Gas fertilizer technology increases CO in the air of planting greenhouses₂Concentration to improve crop yield and production efficiency; in terms of artificial biosynthesis, microalgae and other organisms are used to fix CO through photosynthesis₂, and convert it into high value-added products such as biofuels, food, feed or fertilizers; in the synthesis of new materials, CO can be converted₂Convert and manufacture new materials with high added value, such as methanol, carbon nanotubes, graphene, etc.

"In the Shanghai 120,000 tons/year carbon capture demonstration project, we will use the captured CO₂The product is used as welding protective gas to achieve CO₂Reuse. In the 1.5 million tons/year CCUS full-process demonstration project in Longdong, Gansu, large-scale saltwater layer storage, CO₂Oil displacement and other forms to achieve CO₂Seal it up, and at the same time promote the transformation and application of the results of innovation consortium units." Gao Shiwang introduced.

Accelerate industrial development with innovation consortium

As a strategic emerging industry, CCUS is still in the industrialization demonstration stage in our country, and its industrial development is facing insufficient cross-industry, cross-field, cross-enterprise, and cross-regional synergy, low-concentration CO₂Key core technologies such as capture, large-scale utilization, and long-term storage safety monitoring have shortcomings and weaknesses, as well as imperfect laws, regulations and standard systems. Gao Shiwang said that my country's CCUS projects still have problems such as long research and development cycles, large investment scales, and high operating costs.

In order to solve the bottleneck of CCUS industrialization development, with the strong support of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, PetroChina and China Huaneng jointly took the lead in establishing a "systematic and task-oriented" CCUS Innovation Consortium to lead the high-quality development of my country's CCUS industry.

"As the earliest CO development in China₂Capture and CO₂For oil displacement and storage companies, we and PetroChina are jointly building the 1.5 million tons/year CCUS demonstration project of the world's largest coal-fired power plant at Huaneng Longdong Energy Base." The relevant person in charge of China Huaneng said that the demonstration project will be used as a guide. The medium-term goal is to complete a 1.5 million tons/year carbon capture, utilization and storage demonstration project, and the long-term goal is to build a 10 million ton CCUS industrialization capacity.

"We will join forces with central enterprises, local state-owned enterprises, universities, scientific research institutes and other units to address the major strategic needs and shortcomings of the development of the CCUS industry, and use low-cost, low-energy capture, supercritical safe transportation, and large-scale efficient utilization of carbon dioxide., long-term stable storage is the focus of technical research, and efforts will be made to build a linkage platform for the entire industrial chain of the upper, middle and lower reaches." The person in charge told reporters that next, the CCUS Innovation Consortium will be led by China Huaneng to organize and implement carbon capture and industrial policies, and PetroChina will take the lead in organizing and implementing transportation, utilization and storage.

It is understood that during the 1.5 million tons/year CCUS demonstration project of Huaneng Longdong Energy Base, CO captured from Zhengning Power Plant₂It will be transported to nearby sites in dense and supercritical phases for oil displacement and geological storage. At present, the main equipment procurement of the demonstration project has been completed and on-site construction is underway.

The establishment of the CCUS Innovation Consortium will help break down technical and industry barriers, promote the construction of demonstration projects, promote the implementation of industrial policies and standards, give full play to the leading role of scientific and technological innovation, and break through the "capture-transportation-utilization-oil displacement and storage" Core technology stuck points to accelerate the large-scale and commercial development of CCUS.

Speaking of the future development of the CCUS Innovation Consortium, China Huaneng proposed to adhere to the "systematic and task-oriented" organizational positioning, comprehensively carry out key technologies and major tasks, and use the deep integration of the industrial chain, supply chain and innovation chain as a link to enhance my country's CCUS technology industrialization design, construction and operation capabilities; at the same time, we should give full play to the joint advantages of supply side and demand side, give full play to the collaborative innovation potential of industry, academia and research, and continue to develop new generations of low-cost, low-energy CCUS technologies and carbon-negative technologies; Give full play to the role of a platform for technical exchanges and resource sharing, regularly hold CCUS international forums and young scholars salons, strengthen intellectual property protection, and improve the achievement transformation mechanism.