Carbon capture and utilization for sodium bicarbonate production assisted by solar thermal power D. Bonaventura a,b , R. Chacartegui a,⇑ , J.M. Valverde a , J.A. Becerra a , V. Verda b a University of Seville, Spain b Politecnico di Torino, Italy article info Article history: Available online xxxx Keywords: CO 2 capture Coal fired power plant CCS CCU Dry carbonate process Trona Sodium bicarbonate abstract In this paper, a novel carbon capture and utilization process is proposed. It is based on using a fraction of the captured carbon dioxide to produce sodium bicarbonate, a widely used product in the chemical and food industries. The process couples the Dry Carbonate process for carbon dioxide capture with sodium bicarbonate production. Raw material is trona or sodium sesquicarbonate dehydrate, which is a relatively abundant mineral composed by approximately 46% sodium carbonate and 35% sodium bicarbonate by weight. In the process, trona is firstly converted into sodium carbonate in a fluidized bed reactor operated at 180–200 °C and 1 bar. Heat required in the fluidized bed reactor for decomposing trona can be supplied by renewable sources such as low/medium temperature solar energy or biomass. A fraction of the sodium carbonate generated is recirculated for carbon dioxide capture by means of the dry carbonate process. The rest is converted to sodium bicarbonate in a carbonating tower through the reaction with carbon dioxide and water. After separation of sodium bicarbonate and other salts from water, the sodium bicar- bonate produced is suitable for direct sale. The use of renewable sources for supplying the energy required at the sorbent regenerator and for trona decomposition yields a near-zero carbon dioxide emis- sions global system. As case of study, carbon dioxide capture coupled to sodium bicarbonate production has been analysed for a 15 MW el coal fired power plant. Heat required in the carbon capture process penalizes the global system efficiency by a 10.2%, which is reduced just to the electricity parasitic con- sumption for solids transport and carbon dioxide compression (3%) if renewable energy sources are integrated. From an economic perspective, the penalty in electricity consumption is fully compensated by the new by-product sales. Taking into account the reduction of electricity sales and current prices of trona and sodium bicarbonate a return of investment is obtained in the range between 3 and 8.7 years with an internal rate of return over 12%. These values improve the current forecast of any other carbon capture and storage process up to date, which suggests a high interest of the proposed conceptual inte- gration specially for regions where trona is widely available. Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction A complete replacement of fossil fuels by renewable energies is not feasible in the short-term. Thus, fossil fuel power plants should be urgently retrofitted with CO 2 capture and sequestration (CCS) processes as a necessary measure to limit global warming below 2 °C [1]. CCS would allow continuing the use of fossil fuel until a deeper penetration of renewable energy sources into the grid is attained in an orderly fashion. CO 2 capture and utilization (CCU) for commercial purposes would help mitigating capture costs that mainly hinder the commercial deployment of state of the art CO 2 capture technologies. Current anthropogenic CO 2 emissions (around 35 Gt/y) largely exceed the amount of CO 2 used in chem- ical processes (200 Mt/y). However, promoting CO 2 utilization routes for the production of valuable chemicals could be a starting point to promote the deployment of CO 2 capture technologies [2]. According to International Energy Agency (IEA) projections, the CCS share of cumulative emissions reduction to achieve the 2 °C target would require about 3500 large-scale CCS projects in opera- tion by 2050. Only about 15 large-scale CCS commercial projects are in operation to this date of which Boundary Dam in Canada is the only coal fired power plant applying CCS in the power sector. Yet, it is estimated that abandoning CCS in the power sector would increase the investment required over 40% in the 2 °C scenario [3]. Moreover, post-combustion capture technologies have the greatest potential for reduction of CO 2 emissions in the short term because http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2017.03.042 0196-8904/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. Energy Conversion and Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy Conversion and Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman Please cite this article in press as: Bonaventura D et al. Carbon capture and utilization for sodium bicarbonate production assisted by solar thermal power. Energy Convers Manage (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2017.03.042