TYPE Original Research PUBLISHED 01 November 2023 DOI 10.3389/fther.2023.1282028
Integration of carbon capture in a pulpmill — effect of strategic development towards better biomass resource utilization
OPEN ACCESS
EDITEDBY Stanislav Boldyryev, University of Zagreb, Croatia REVIEWED BY Mamdouh Gadalla, Port Said University, Egypt Nidret Ibric, University of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina *CORRESPONDENCE Elin Svensson, elin.svensson@chalmers.se RECEIVED 23 August 2023 ACCEPTED 17 October 2023 PUBLISHED 01 November 2023
Henrik Skoglund 1 , Chao Fu 2 , Simon Harvey 1 and Elin Svensson 1 *
1 Division of Energy Technology, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden, 2 SINTEF Energy Research, Trondheim, Norway
The pulp and paper industry has an important role in the industrial transition towards net zero or negative emissions, given its renewable biomass-based feedstock and energy supply. In particular, pulp and paper mills have large existing sources of biogenic CO 2, with a high potential to contribute to carbon dioxide removal through carbon capture and storage (CCS). To effectively navigate anticipated changes in feedstock and energy markets, there is a need for a better understanding of how different technology pathways for the pulp and paper industry interact with one another, for instance, how enhanced valorization of biomass side streams may affect the potential for carbon capture. This paper aims to investigate the effect of combining carbon capture with lignin extraction in a chemical pulp mill. Pinch analysis is used to study how the targets for heat recovery, fuel usage and electricity generation, are affected by different mill and capture con fi gurations. Based on these results, the effect on carbon fl ows is evaluated. The results show that when carbon capture technology is implemented and fuel use is minimized at the case-study mill, there is still enough heat available from the recovery boilers to supply the process needs without requiring usage of a utility boiler. However, when carbon capture is combined with lignin extraction, the heat production of the recovery boilers is no longer suf fi cient to cover the process demands, and additional heat from a utility boiler is required. However, this case implies that some of the carbon leaves the mill embedded in the extracted lignin product, which can be expected to have a higher value than captured carbon dioxide. When back-pressure electricity production was maximized for the different mill con fi gurations, a very high fuel-to-electricity ef fi ciency could be achieved, but since the CO 2 emissions from the utility boiler were not assumed to be captured, this would lead to more carbon being emitted compared to the capture scenarios with minimized fuel use.
CITATION Skoglund H, Fu C, Harvey S and
Svensson E (2023), Integration of carbon capture in a pulp mill — effect of strategic development towards better biomass resource utilization.
Front. Therm. Eng. 3:1282028. doi: 10.3389/fther.2023.1282028
COPYRIGHT © 2023 Skoglund, Fu, Harvey and Svensson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License
(CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is
permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
KEYWORDS
carbon capture, pulp and paper, heat integration, lignin extraction, carbon dioxide removal 1 Introduction Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies will have an important role in reaching climate targets, by compensating for residual emissions from hard-to-abate sectors and allowing for net negative emissions. Bio-Energy Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) is one of few CDR technologies that can be implemented on a large scale and deliver secure long- term storage of the CO 2 in a relatively cost-ef fi cient way (Fajardy et al., 2021). A major
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