Decarbonisation Technology - November 2022

DMX performance

Requirements and precisions

Energy penalty target

From 2.3 to 2.9 GJ/tCO 2 depending on application and capture

CO 2 capture rate

Up to 99.5% CO 2 captured

CO 2 purity

Up to 99.7 vol% (dry)

CO 2 pressure (regenerator top)

Up to 5 barg, which allows a huge CO 2 compression cost reduction compared to other commercial processes

Table 1 Main performance data of DMX technology

contributes to reducing the heat requirement for thermal regeneration. Another beneficial feature of the Solvent is its high thermal stability, which allows regeneration at higher temperatures than amine solvents such as MEA. This allows CO₂ recovery at higher pressure (up to 5 barg) and contributes to significant CO₂ compression cost savings. The Solvent also offers high chemical stability in the presence of oxygen, which is beneficial for all kinds of flue gas applications. The performance of the DMX Solvent has been assessed through initial laboratory studies and small-scale pilot plant tests through previous collaborative projects like Octavius (OCTAVIUS, 2022) and Valorco (VALORCO, 2022). Thanks to the Solvent’s properties, the Process has great potential for reducing the energy penalty and cost of CO₂ capture for a large variety of applications. Compared to the first-generation absorption process using 30 wt% MEA, the DMX Process allows a reduction of 30% on the energy penalty and cost of CO₂ capture. The DMX Solvent is less corrosive than MEA, allowing the use of carbon steel as the principal material, which also reduces the Capex compared to other first-generation solvents. The performance characteristics of the Process, based on the development carried out at IFPEN, are summarised in Table 1 . The DMX Process has great potential for reducing the energy penalty and cost of CO₂ capture for a large variety of applications

DMX appeared as the best rated second- generation solvent for CO₂ capture in previous benchmarking studies, such as the one presented by Prachi Singh (IEAGH) at GHGT-11 (Singh and Brilman, 2012). The DMX Process was originally developed for CO₂ capture from coal power station flue gases and gas from steel manufacturing, on which specific experiments have been conducted. However, it is also suitable for capturing CO₂ from other emitters, such as refinery FCC units and steam methane reformers (SMR), waste incinerators, cement plants, district heating, and the production of electricity from biomass. The Process is well adapted to CO 2 capture on industrial smoke or industrial gas when the CO₂ partial pressures are low to medium. The DMX technology has been developed and optimised to capture CO₂ at partial pressures in the range of 0.1-1 bara in flue gas. Development history The DMX Process has already undergone 10 years of development from laboratory scale (Raynal et al. , 2010) to global optimisation in the power (Raynal et al. , 2014, Broutin et al ., 2016), and steel industries (Dreillard et al. , 2016), and has now reached Technology Readiness Level 4 (TRL4), as shown in Figure 2 . demonstrating integrated concepts for zero- emission power plants covering all components needed for power generation from coal as well as CO₂ capture and compression. The Valorco project, coordinated by ArcelorMittal and funded by ADEME, was aimed at reducing and valorising CO₂ emissions from The Octavius project, developed in partnership with ENEL, was aimed at