CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS VOL. 76, 2019 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at www.aidic.it/cet Guest Editors: Petar S. Varbanov, Timothy G. Walmsley, Jiří J. Klemeš, Panos Seferlis Copyright © 2019, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. ISBN 978-88-95608-73-0; ISSN 2283-9216 Reducing Carbon Footprint of Energy-Intensive Applications by CO2 Capture Technologies: An Integrated Technical and Environmental Assessment Ana-Maria Cormos, Simion Dragan, Letitia Petrescu, Dora-Andreea Chisalita, Szabolcs Szima, Vlad-Cristian Sandu, Calin-Cristian Cormos* Babes – Bolyai University, Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, 11 Arany Janos, Postal code: RO-400028, Cluj – Napoca, Romania cormos@chem.ubbcluj.ro Reducing the CO2 emissions from energy production sector as well as from other energy-intensive industrial applications (e.g. metallurgy, cement, chemistry etc.) is of great importance today. Carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technologies are under development to be implemented in fossil fuel-based industrial applications to reduce the carbon footprint. The main aim of this paper is to present, through illustrative coal- based examples, the CO2 capture technologies used to reduce the carbon footprint of energy-intensive processes. The assessments are focused on conceptual design, modelling and simulation, process integration and technical and environmental assessment of CO2 capture with potential applications in industrial sectors with high greenhouse gas emissions e.g. power generation, metallurgy, cement, chemicals. Two reactive gas-liquid and gas-solid carbon capture technologies are evaluated through illustrative industrial size examples. The CO2 capture rate is set to 90 %. Various coal-based processes were considered as illustrative examples e.g. combustion, gasification, cement production, integrated steel mill, coal to chemicals etc. The proposed conceptual designs were modelled and simulated using process flow modelling software ChemCAD. The mass and energy balances as well as the thermal integration tools were used to quantify the key technical and environmental performance indicators (e.g. fuel consumption, overall energy efficiency, carbon capture rate, energy penalty for CO2 capture, specific CO2 emissions etc.). The integrated assessments show that CCUS technologies have significant advantages in reducing the environmental impact of energy- intensive industrial applications e.g. cutting the specific CO2 emissions by about 60 - 90 %. 1. Introduction Currently, the energy-intensive industrial sectors face significant challenges in term of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in an attempt to reduce global warming and climate change. Various technical measures can be applied to reduce CO2 emissions e.g. improving energy efficiency, boosting renewable energy and large scale deployment of CO2 capture, utilization and storage technologies. In respect to CO2 capture options from industrial processes many technologies can be used e.g. gas-liquid absorption, oxy-combustion, gas-solid systems in pre-, post- and oxy-combustion configurations. Captured CO2 can be either used as raw material to produce various chemicals / energy carriers (e.g. methanol, substitute natural gas etc.) or to be geologically stored in saline aquifers, depleted oil and gas fields or used for enhanced oil recovery (Metz et al., 2005). This paper is evaluating the technical and environmental impact of CO2 capture for several illustrative coal- based industrial processes e.g. power generation (both combustion and gasification systems), iron and steel, cement and chemicals. The first evaluated CO2 capture option is based on a commercially mature (at least for chemical industry) gas-liquid absorption technology using reactive solvents (e.g. alkanolamines). The second CO2 capture option is based on an innovative reactive gas-solid technology using calcium-based solid sorbents (calcium looping cycle). This new technology promises lower energy and cost penalties for CO2 capture as well as higher energy efficiency compared to other more mature carbon capture options. 1033 DOI: 10.3303/CET1976173 Paper Received: 30/01/2019; Revised: 22/03/2019; Accepted: 22/03/2019 Please cite this article as: Cormos A.-M., Dragan S., Petrescu L., Chisalita D.-A., Szima S., Sandu V.-C., Cormos C.-C., 2019, Reducing Carbon Footprint of Energy-Intensive Applications by CO 2 Capture Technologies: An Integrated Technical and Environmental Assessment, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 76, 1033-1038 DOI:10.3303/CET1976173