Last week I wrote about a series of reports covering carbon capture in the power industry. These reports provide the next level of detail for the carbon capture technology status summary present in the recently published Global Status of CCS: 2011 report, without going overboard on technical detail, with focus mainly on the power industry.

This week I'll talk about the report focused on providing an update for post-combustion carbon capture in the power industry.

Post-combustion capture refers to the separation of CO₂ from flue gas derived from combusting fossil fuels – coal, natural gas, or oil – in air. Some key points raised in the post-combustion carbon capture report are:

• The exclusive emphasis is currently on absorption (into solvents) on near-term technologies, reflecting the fact that industry’s CO₂ capture chemistry knowledge and overall process experience are both heavily slated towards absorption.
• The major challenges in post-combustion capture revolve around the relatively large parasitic load CCS imposes on a power plant, the majority of which is due to capture, especially the energy needed to regenerate the solvent.
• Development of new chemistry, new process designs, and novel power plant integration schemes all aimed at reducing the parasitic load of CCS are the focus of virtually all R&D in post-combustion capture.
• In general, capital cost reductions, solvent degradation, solvent volatility, and other such parameters are secondary to the prime issue of reduction in parasitic load on the host power plant imposed by the process itself.

For further details, refer to the post-combustion carbon capture report here. The report should appeal not only to technical stakeholders, but also to non-technical project people as well as other stakeholders responsible for regulatory and funding of large-scale integrated projects, particularly in the power industry.