Resumen de Integration of CO2 Capture in Urban Wastewater Treatment Plants to Obtain Added-Value Products
The reduction of CO2 emissions is clearly beneficial for our society, and the consecution of commercial materials from this waste is a key point for the development of new circular economy strategies. Herein a novel path to integrate CO2 capture and utilization in biogas upgrading plants is proposed. The synergy between carbon capture and utilization and biogas upgrading is carried out through an integration of CO2 absorption and subsequent CO2 precipitation. The precipitation stage allows obtaining an added-value product and regenerating the solvent used for capturing CO2. This process is presented as an alternative to the elevated energy consumption penalty employed by standards physical regeneration processes to capture CO2 from biogas effluents. The synergy showed presents high novelty and it has not been seen to date. The experimental work was divided into two stages: (1) CO2 absorption; (2) CO2 precipitation. For the first stage, acceptable results in fair agreement with previous works were obtained. For the second stage, four precipitant agents were tested, revealing that calcium precipitants provide better precipitation efficiency and high quality products. After proving the technical feasibility of the process, a scale-up of the process to evaluate the economic performance was carried out. The theoretical aspect involved the scale-up of the process and the design of the equipment including auxiliary stages. The economic evaluation evidences economic advantages of the novel process proposed.
