Technoeconomic and Environmental Evaluation of Sodium Bicarbonate Production Using CO2 from Flue Gas of a Coal-Fired Power Plant

Abstract

This study analyzes the technical, economic, and environmental feasibility of a CO2 mineralization process, which has great potential in terms of CO2 utilization capacity. The chosen process is the sodium bicarbonate manufacturing process that uses sodium carbonate solution with CO2 that is obtained from the flue gas produced from a coal-fired power plant. The technical feasibility analysis involves performance evaluation, which is conducted using a bench-scale apparatus capable of producing sodium bicarbonate with a purity of 99% and greater. According to the analysis, the CO2 reduction potential of the proposed CO2 utilization process is approximately 0.33 ton of CO2 per ton of sodium bicarbonate produced. When comparing CO2 emissions for the production of 1 ton of sodium bicarbonate, the CO2 utilization process of this study produces approximately 0.10 ton of CO2 emissions excluding the CO2 footprint of sodium carbonate, which is the key raw material. If the footprint of sodium carbonate from the Solvay process is used to account for it, this number goes up to 1.96 tons compared to the 1.69 tons produced by the conventional process. In addition, this study evaluates the economic feasibility of a commercial-scale plant based on the proposed technology with the capacity of 30 000 tons of sodium bicarbonate by utilizing approximately 10 000 tons of CO2 per year. Most of the analyzed cases indicate strong economic potential with a benefit-cost ratio and internal rate of return value of 1.45 and 80.5%, respectively.