The dry carbonate process: Carbon dioxide recovery from power plant flue gas

AbstractRTI’s Dry Carbonate Process, a solid sorbent CO2 capture approach, has been developed as a retrofit technology for existing power plants. The process is based on the reversible reaction between sodium carbonate, CO2, and water vapor to form sodium bicarbonate. Concentrated CO2 is recovered by a thermal-swing process. Field testing of a prototype Dry Carbonate Process has been completed with a total of 235 h of operation using natural gas- and coal-derived flue gases. The Dry Carbonate demonstrated >90% CO2 capture and minimal adverse effects of exposure to SO2. Current R&D efforts are focussing on improving the process configuration and sorbent material to scale-up the process to a pilot unit capable of capturing 1 ton of CO2 per day