Chemical Engineering Research & Design, Vol.89, No.9A, 1446-1460, 2011
Recent developments on carbon capture and storage: An overview
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assumes the warming of the climate system, associating the increase of global average temperature to the observed increase of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is considered the most important GHG, due to the dependence of world economies on fossil fuels, since their combustion processes are the most important sources of this gas. CO2 concentrations are increasing in the last decades mainly due to the increase of anthropogenic emissions. The processes involving CO2 capture and storage is gaining attention on the scientific community as an alternative for decreasing CO2 emission, reducing its concentration in ambient air. However, several technological, economical and environmental issues as well as safety problems remain to be solved, such as the following needs: increase of CO2 capture efficiency, reduction of process costs, and verification of environmental sustainability of CO2 storage. This paper aims to review the recent developments (from 2006 until now) on the carbon capture and storage (CCS) methodologies. Special attention was focused on the basic findings achieved in CCS operational projects. (C) 2011 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.