This paper presents an assessment of the cost performance of CO₂ capture technologies when retrofitted to a cement plant: MEA-based absorption, oxyfuel, chilled ammonia-based absorption (Chilled Ammonia Process), membrane-assisted CO₂ liquefaction, and calcium looping. While the technical basis for this study is presented in Part 1 of this paper series, this work presents a comprehensive techno-economic analysis of these CO₂ capture technologies based on a capital and operating costs evaluation for retrofit in a cement plant. The cost of the cement plant product, clinker, is shown to increase with 49 to 92% compared to the cost of clinker without capture. The cost of CO₂ avoided is between 42 €/t_CO2 (for the oxyfuel-based capture process) and 84 €/t_CO2 (for the membrane-based assisted liquefaction capture process), while the reference MEA-based absorption capture technology has a cost of 80 €/t_CO2. Notably, the cost figures depend strongly on factors such as steam source, electricity mix, electricity price, fuel price and plant-specific characteristics. Hence, this confirms the conclusion of the technical evaluation in Part 1 that for final selection of CO₂ capture technology at a specific plant, a plant-specific techno-economic evaluation should be performed, also considering more practical considerations.

A technical evaluation of CO₂ capture technologies when retrofitted to a cement plant is performed. The investigated technologies are the oxyfuel process, the chilled ammonia process, membrane-assisted CO₂ liquefaction, and the calcium looping process with tail-end and integrated configurations. For comparison, absorption with monoethanolamine (MEA) is used as reference technology. The focus of the evaluation is on emission abatement, energy performance, and retrofitability. All the investigated technologies perform better than the reference both in terms of emission abatement and energy consumption. The equivalent CO₂ avoided are 73–90%, while it is 64% for MEA, considering the average EU-28 electricity mix. The specific primary energy consumption for CO₂ avoided is 1.63–4.07 MJ/kg CO₂, compared to 7.08 MJ/kg CO₂ for MEA. The calcium looping technologies have the highest emission abatement potential, while the oxyfuel process has the best energy performance. When it comes to retrofitability, the post-combustion technologies show significant advantages compared to the oxyfuel and to the integrated calcium looping technologies. Furthermore, the performance of the individual technologies shows strong dependencies on site-specific and plant-specific factors. Therefore, rather than identifying one single best technology, it is emphasized that CO₂ capture in the cement industry should be performed with a portfolio of capture technologies, where the preferred choice for each specific plant depends on local factors.

This paper is written in response to the paper “How green is blue hydrogen?” by R. W. Howarth and M. Z. Jacobson. It aims at highlighting and discussing the method and assumptions of that paper, and thereby providing a more balanced perspective on blue hydrogen, which is in line with current best available practices and future plant specifications aiming at low CO₂ emissions. More specifically, in this paper, we show that: (i) the simplified method that Howarth and Jacobson used to compute the energy balance of blue hydrogen plants leads to significant overestimation of CO₂ emissions and natural gas (NG) consumption and (ii) the assumed methane leakage rate is at the high end of the estimated emissions from current NG production in the United States and cannot be considered representative of all‐NG and blue hydrogen value chains globally. By starting from the detailed and rigorously calculated mass and energy balances of two blue hydrogen plants in the literature, we show the impact that methane leakage rate has on the equivalent CO₂ emissions of blue hydrogen. On the basis of our analysis, we show that it is possible for blue hydrogen to have significantly lower equivalent CO₂ emissions than the direct use of NG, provided that hydrogen production processes and CO₂ capture technologies are implemented that ensure a high CO₂ capture rate, preferably above 90%, and a low‐emission NG supply chain.