Membrane-based carbon capture for waste-to-energy: Process performance, impact, and time-efficient optimization

The energy crisis and rising waste production results in the need for more waste-to-energy solutions. However, capturing fossil-based carbon from waste incineration is crucial. The power consumption and overall impact of the carbon capture process are essential for the identification of the most suitable solution. The aim of this paper is to promote a time-efficient optimization, optimize a membrane-based post-combustion carbon capture process, and quantify its impacts on a waste-to-energy plant for various system configurations with different levels of CO2 recovery and purity. The proposed robust evaluation of the system with non-linearities resulted in the utilization of genetic algorithms with subsequent verification. Quantifying power consumption allows the comparison of different carbon capture technologies. The results confirm the importance of process optimization, show the influence of individual parameters, and quantify the disproportionate drop in power consumption with decreasing target CO2 recovery. The power consumption can be as low as 1.14 GJ/tonne of CO2 for CO2 purity of 95 % and recovery of 50 % and 1.66 GJ/tonne of CO2 for CO2 purity of 95 % and recovery of 90 %. The results also suggest that carbon neutrality can be achieved without compromising the R1 efficiency classification of energy recovery. [Display omitted] •Modeling a multi-stage membrane post-combustion carbon capture system.•Optimization of process parameters using heuristic algorithms.•Analysis of the trade-off between power consumption and total membrane area.•Evaluation of different multi-staged systems configurations.•Assessment of the system's impact on a waste-to-energy plant.