A physical absorption assessment of a new alternative solvent for carbon capture

Abstract

The reliance of the world economies on the use of fossil fuels (i.e. coal, natural gas and oil) as primary source of energy, have contributes to the high emission of CO2 in atmosphere. One of the promising way to mitigate the CO2 emission is by implemented Post Combustion Carbon Capture (PCCC) through absorption process. PCCC by amines based solvent is a method to remove the carbon dioxide from the main stream of escape gases before releasing them to the atmosphere. Using this technology, it is possible to reduce CO2 emissions rate around 80 % to 95 %. Currently, the commercialise solvent used for carbon capture which is monoethanolamine, (MEA) have some drawbacks such as high energy penalty for regeneration process, solvent degradation issue and not environmental friendly. Therefore it is a need to develop new alternative solvent to improve the current carbon capture process. The objective of this study is to evaluate the absorption and desorption performance of new alternative solvent for carbon capture process. In this study, Aspen Plus software is used to simulate the absorption and desorption process, estimate and evaluate the performance of MEA and all new alternative solvent. Three absorption performance criteria that is assessed in this study are percentage of CO2 capture by each solvent, energy required for solvent regeneration and percentage of solvent loss through thermal degradation process. This performance assessment is only based on the physical absorption theory. The reaction interaction between CO2 and solvent will not be assessed in this study due to the limitation of data of new alternatives solvent. The result of this study shows that, all the new alternatives solvent is suitable for PCCC process. Besides, some of the solvent show a good performance (less energy requirement, high capture capacity and low rate of degradation) when compare with MEA.