SUSTEON INC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: C54-22b

Description

Susteon, Inc., in collaboration with Ohio State University, proposes to develop a low cost, magnetically stabilized, inductively heated (MSIH) CO2 capture process for NGCC flue gas. Development of low-cost carbon capture technologies for natural gas fired combined cycle (NGCC) plants represent an important pathway to achieve deep decarbonization of power generation sector. Compared to coal-fired power generation plants, natural gas fired power plants are approximately 56% carbon intensive per unit electricity produced. However, if all coal-fired assets were converted into NGCC, the carbon emissions reduction gained falls short of stabilizing atmospheric CO2 concentrations [2]. In 2021, natural gas-fired plants accounted for 37% of the total electricity generated in the US, emitting nearly 653 million metric tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. [3] In order to stabilize atmospheric CO2 concentrations and mitigate the impact of increased GHG emissions, adopting carbon capture technologies for NGCC is required. The proposed process is based on several key innovations in sorbent reaction chemistry, unique inductive heating and flow stabilization by magnetic field, fast cycle time to increase overall sorbent productivity, and scalable reactor design. These innovations manifest into low overall energy penalty for the MSIH process, 1.56 GJ/ton CO2 compared to >2.88 GJ/ton CO2 for current state of the art amines systems. With the low cost of materials of construction, minimal utility requirements, low energy penalty, and low cost of the sorbent, MSIH process can potentially reduce the cost of CO2 capture by >35% for the NGCC flue gas compared to the current technologies. The proposed project seeks to test a 1 kg/day bench-scale MSIH test unit and explore the key parameters that may affect the sorbent regeneration and CO2 capture capacity. Extensive development and optimization of the magnetically enhance sorbent will be performed in preparation for the bench unit testing. The project will also evaluate the commercial potential of the MSIH process by performing a comprehensive process economic analysis based on the experimental data obtained from the testing of the magnetic sorbent in the bench-scale MSIH reactor. In SBIR Phase II, the technology will be scaled up and tested at 50 kg/day of CO2 at a power plant site to advance the technology Readiness Level (TRL) to TRL5.