Development of a low cost CO2 capture system with a novel absorbent under the COCS project

The COCS (Cost Saving CO2 Capture System) Project had been carried out by RITE in collaboration with four Japanese companies from April 2004 to March 2009. It was the R&D project to reduce CO2 capture cost by half compared to the cost of a conventional technology for CO2 removal from a blast furnace gas in an integrated steel works. One of the main research issues in this project was to develop a novel absorbent which could be regenerated with a low thermal energy. RITE especially led the development of new absorbents. Initially amine solvents were investigated through laboratory-scale experiments, and then some selected solvents were evaluated at the 1t-CO2/d test plant. RITE successfully developed innovative amine absorbents, which have high absorption rate and low desorption energy of about 2.5–2.65 GJ/t-CO2 for CO2 capture from a blast furnace gas.