Techno-economic feasibility of ionic liquids-based CO2 chemical capture processes

[Display omitted] •3 ILs were techno-economically evaluated on CO2 chemical capture processes.•3 Plant scales were studied for post-combustion, biogas and pre-combustion systems.•ILs-based CO2 chemical capture processes cost benefit from economy of scale.•Regenerating the IL at vacuum pressure entails a great cost penalty.•High IL gap capacity & high heat of reaction are related to less overall cost. A techno-economic assessment of Ionic Liquids (ILs)-based post-combustion, biogas and pre-combustion CO2 chemical capture processes was carried out using Aspen Plus and Aspen Process Economic Analyzer (APEA). This cost estimation procedure is newly integrated to our COSMO-based/Aspen Plus methodology used to design the chemical absorption processes with 90% of CO2 capture. The equipment investment and variable operating cost were analyzed relating to the process operating conditions and the IL performance. The total annualized cost was used as the index to economically evaluate the processes at three CO2 treatment capacities and employing three different ILs: [P2228][CNPyr], [P66614][CNPyr] and [Bmim][acetate]. It benefits from economy of scale as well as it is directly related to both IL enthalpy of reaction and process gap capacity, being [P2228][CNPyr] -which has the most exothermic reaction and highest gap capacity- the solvent achieving the lowest costs. Current results indicate that operating at vacuum pressure to better regenerate the IL entails a remarkable cost penalty. Hence, both capital (CAPEX) and operational expenses (OPEX) could be reduced to achieve a total cost of 81.32 $/tCO2 for [P2228][CNPyr] in post-combustion CO2 capture when regenerating the IL at atmospheric pressure and 121.5 °C. Three IL pricing basis were considered when calculating the solvent cost. A conservative IL scaled up price of 50 $/kg only increments around 5% the total annualized cost of the process.