(156a) Evaluation of Hollow Fiber Membrane Modules for CO2 Direct Air Capture and Utilization in Low-Purity CO2 Processes

The detrimental impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate has motivated the surge of carbon dioxide capture and utilization (CCU) strategies. In particular, Direct Air Capture (DAC) of CO₂ is being widely considered as an effective way to capture CO₂ directly from the atmosphere, addressing historical emissions. High throughput gas separation membranes with high CO₂/N₂ selectivities have an advantage of enabling continuous process operations and therefore must be considered as a standalone or in hybrid form for DAC^[1].

This presentation will address a staged hollow fiber membrane process for concentrating atmospheric CO₂ (420 ppm) to a product stream with CO₂ concentration of <10%. Some applications of such low-purity CO₂ streams will be highlighted, including utilization in a photobioreactor. This study is conducted in Aspen Plus, where the membrane separation process scenarios are simulated, and considerations for energy demand and cost of each case are analyzed using the Process Operability framework^[2,3].

The operability framework maps the feasible regions of operation for the scenarios proposed, taking into consideration the available input conditions while seeking to maintain the process within desired energy efficiency and net-negative carbon emission goals. As the use of gas separation membranes for DAC has not been widely explored yet, this work is expected to provide better understanding of the process bounds, regarding the techno-economic feasibility and the overall process being “carbon-negative”.

[1] - Garry S.P. Taifan, Christos T. Maravelias. Generalized optimization-based synthesis of membrane systems for multicomponent gas mixture separation. Chem. Eng. Sc. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ces.2022.117482.

[2] - Gazzaneo, V., Lima, F. V. Multilayer Operability Framework for Process Design, Intensification, and Modularization of Nonlinear Energy Systems. Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.iecr.8b05482.

[3] - Gama, V., Dinh, S., Alves, V., Dantas, B., Bishop, B. A. and Lima, F. V. Modeling and Process Operability Analysis of a Direct Air Capture System. In Proceedings of the 13th IFAC Symposium on Dynamics and Control of Process Systems, including Biosystems (DYCOPS). 2022.