Low-temperature CO2 capture technologies – Applications and potential

•Low-temperature separation methods for CO2 capture and storage.•Overview of capture conditions for power cycles and industrial processes.•Assessment of the specific CO2 separation and compression work for low-temperature capture for various capture conditions.•Review of low-temperature capture applications for all capture routes.

CO2 capture by chemical or physical sorption and membrane separation have been the dominant fields of research within post- and pre-combustion CO2 capture from power cycles and industrial processes. Except for oxy-combustion capture applications, limited attention has been given to low-temperature capture from flue gas and synthesis gas by phase separation. This paper gives an overview of common CO2 capture conditions for a broad range of different power cycles and industrial processes. For a selected range of capture conditions, potential applications for low-temperature CO2 capture have been evaluated with respect to energy consumption and CO2 capture ratio. For all applications of low-temperature capture, specific power consumption and obtainable CO2 capture ratio are sensitive to flue-gas or synthesis-gas feed CO2 concentration. However, for certain applications such as synthesis gas from coal gasification, low-temperature capture shows promising potential and highly competitive energy figures compared to baseline technology.