Introduction

Ammonia/urea and methanol production are the pillars of the basic chemicals industry worldwide. Ammonia/urea is an important commodity used in the agriculture (fertiliser) and food industry. Whilst methanol is an important feedstock in production of various chemicals and fuel used in our daily lives. Globally (except for China), these commodities are mainly produced from NG or ljosirt hydrocarbons.

It should also be noted that both urea and methanol production (combined) are the largest users of CO2 second only to CO2-EOR.

This study presents a detailed baseline information of the performance and cost of deploying CO2 capture in a SMR Based HyCO plant using natural gas as feedstock / fuel and operating as a captive plant (i.e. integrated within an industrial complex) with an aim to evaluate the cost of capturing additional CO2 from the SMR’s flue gas.

Key Monitoring Discussion Points

• An SMR could be integrated into an industrial complex such as an ammonia or methanol plant.
  • In general, the syngas generation used in ammonia plant is based on SMR in tandem with an air blown ATR.  This is the typical conventional ammonia production configuration (i.e. no need of air separation unit).

• Normally, with large methanol plants as presented in this study, the SMR is always in tandem with an oxygen blown ATR.

• The addition of capture of CO2 from the flue gas of SMR increases the energy demand of the plant.

• For the ammonia/urea production – an additional 8.6MWe of electricity is imported from the grid.

• For the methanol production – an additional 17.9 MWe of electricity is imported from the grid.
• In general, the addition of CCS increases the levelised cost of production.

• For the ammonia/urea production – this increases by 23 €/t urea.

• For the methanol production – this increases by 24 €/t methanol

• The CO2 avoided cost of capturing additional CO2 from the SMR plant is in the range of €80 to 100 per tonne CO2 for both cases.

• It is well established that CO2 is used as reactant to both urea and methanol production.  This is considered as mature technology.  This study should provide a good basis for understanding the performance and cost of implementing both industrial CCS and CCU.