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Abstract
Profound scientific insight into the carbon cycle and deeper understanding
of the potential consequences associated with risks of climate change, along
with a recognized public awareness about the link between global warming and
human activity, has put the issue of finding and approving mitigation actions
in the top national & international agendas. On the other hand, the ever
increasing need of energy; necessary for economic growth, and the expected
strategical reliance on fossil fuels and coal as a major energy source in the
foreseeable future, will definitely lead to a dramatic increase in carbon
generation. Eventually, an effective mitigating action can only be achieved by
capturing the carbon release, or emission, to atmosphere rather than by
cutting-down carbon generation. Even though the full scale deployment of
integrated CCS facilities is still immature, yet it is very promising. The
technical feasibility of the component technologies has been proven successful.
Applications such as Carbon Capture in large ammonia plants, CO2 transportation
via pipelines and transport ships and Carbon injection for Enhanced Oil
Recovery (EOR) are already in operation. The real challenge for constructing
& operating CCS facilities is financial & political rather than
technical. Huge investments are required globally on a large scale and need to
be economically and socially justified. It is estimated that building an
associated Carbon Capturing facility along with a Power Generation plant may
double the capital cost and increase the running cost up to 1.5 times, as a
consequence it is thought that the price of electric power to be paid by the
end-users will increase by at least 50%. This economic “penalty”, sensed at the
short term, will raise serious public concerns. Thus there is an urgent need to
find feasible financial models for deploying CCS technology with the minimum
cost possible. Such a task requires the design optimization of CCS facilities
based on techno-economic models. Techno-economic models based on mathematical
formulation for the partial components of CCS facilities are readily available
in the literature, but still there is a necessity to integrate these component
models together in a one analytical model to view the picture as a whole, after
all, the complete CCS train will be operating synchronously as one train
entity. Once such an integrated model is available, an optimization problem can
be formulated, and a technically feasible and financially attractive solution
can be found to achieve the minimum total cost with the optimum design
variables. Cutting down costs will be enhanced with time, following the trend
of the learning curve in this field. This paper presents a methodology for
implementing design optimization of CCS facilities at the conceptual level by
simulating various combinatory scenarios, for finding the most economically
attractive & technically feasible solution.
Keywords
Carbon, Carbon Dioxide, CCS, Design Optimization, Emissions, Pipeline,
Modeling, Multi-Objective Optimization, Stochastic Algorithm, Carbon Capture,
Monoethanolamine, Carbon Storage, Sequestration, Techno-economic, Cost Model,
Climate Change, Greenhouse Gas, Global Warming.
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