Environmental, health and safety assessment of post-combustion CO2 capture processes with phase-change solvents

Abstract

A class of solvents for chemisorption-based CO2 capture, phase-change solvents, promises significant energy reductions due to liquid-liquid phase separation and partial solvent recycling before CO2 desorption. Although energy consumption is a critical aspect of the CO2 capture process sustainability, a holistic evaluation of health, safety, and environmental impacts is required to confirm the beneficial performance of processes employing phase-change solvents compared to conventional alternatives. This study outlines a method for combining the life cycle and environmental, health and safety hazard assessment. The method is applied for the first time on processes employing two different exemplary phase-change solvents, a reference aqueous solution of methylcyclohexylamine (MCA) and a novel mixture of cyclohexylpropane-1,3-diamine (S1N) and dimethylcyclohexylamine (DMCA). The results show that phase-change solvents have the potential to be a better alternative to conventional amine (i.e., MEA) solvent systems due to the reduced reboiler duty and lower impact on the environment. However, additional care might need to be taken to prevent the potential accumulation of the carcinogenic nitrosamines in the system.