The first Application of CO2 Removal in a Wte Plant in Italy

The amounts of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) produced and the greenhouse gas emissions (including CO2) from human activities are increasing with the growing of the global population and their environmental impact needs to be reduced. Processing MSW in Waste-to-Energy (WtE) plants presents the twofold advantage of managing the MSW recovery and of producing energy, in the form of electricity and heat, avoiding the use of fossil fuels. In addition, for WtE plants operating on MSW with a significant biogenic component, Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) can provide a path to negative CO2 emissions. This research project results from a collaboration among A2A SpA, Acinque Ambiente Srl and the “Group on Advanced Separation Processes & GAS Processing” (GASP) of Politecnico di Milano and aims at installing and operating the first CCUS plant in a WtE in Italy, as part of a larger A2A SpA project for achieving the A2A SpA's decarbonization targets. The work focuses on the section for CO2 removal from the incinerator flue gas, performed with chemical absorption by an amine-based solvent. The design has been carried out by optimizing the main process parameters and by estimating the energy requirements considering the specificities of the flue gas to be treated, which contains about 7 mol % CO2. Then, the considerations for choosing the appropriate size and design of the pilot plant planned to be installed in the next few years at the WtE plant in Como (Italy) are reported and discussed.