Amines' effect on CO2 removal efficiency

Abstract

Efficient CO₂ mitigation techniques will become increasingly demanding due to environmental issues.  There are many sources which release CO₂ and combustion of fossil fuel plays the major role. Coal fired power plants are the most prominent CO₂ emitting source today. The main purpose of this study is to understand the solvent’s effect on CO₂ removal efficiency for power plant flue gas treating. Four different types of solvents are taken into consideration. MEA, Diethanolamine (DEA), Diglycolamine (DGA) and Methyldiethanolamine (MDEA) are applied as solvent for capturing processes. A coal fired flue gas removal process is implemented in to Aspen Plus. The solvent strength and lean loading are considered as most relevant factors for analyzing. With the variation of these factors, efficiency of CO₂ removal from power plant flue gas is examined for different solvents. The four different solvents have unique optimum conditions such as; concentration, lean loading and solvent temperature, for highest removal efficiency. The suitable concentrations for MEA, DEA and MDEA are normally around 20-30wt%, however, DGA can be used as higher concentration solvent for CO₂ removal. MDEA has low heat of regeneration and maximum loading capacity as well as less corrosive effect than MEA.