Cryogenics started in the last decades of 1800’s with the liquefaction of oxygen and grew since to serve many applications at different temperature range. While first commercial cryogenic air separation plants required removing CO₂ traces from air to avoid freezing, CO₂ capture at large scale started the same era (1930’s) with different technology and requirements to upgrade natural gas.
CO₂ capture technologies flourished at the beginning of this century with the rising concerns on climate change and cryogenic solutions were pursued among other new concepts to decarbonize the power generation sector. While cryogenic technologies deemed commercial and economical, they have dealt with liquid and gases whereas CO₂ cryogenic solutions would have to deal with solids, increasing the complexity and the challenge.
The talk addresses the status of cryogenic CO₂ capture today, what are the latest developments and what are the bottlenecks to reach successful commercialization.