Optimized Process for Post-Combustion CO2 Capture in Thermoelectric Power Plant using structured packing

The purpose of this work is to simulate CO2 capture process, using Monoethanolamine (MEA) at 30 % weight, at power plant and using Aspen Plus (TM) simulator. CO2 is removed by chemical absorption processes from the flue gases of the power plant. The main challenge of the chemical absorption CO2 capture processes is reducing the energy requirement in the stripper which has contributors from reboiler energy consumption and maximum CO2 absorption. This work presents an enhancement the structured packing study in separation columns: ININ 18, Sulzer BX and Mellapak 250Y, and the advance of CCS technologies (CO2 capture and sequestration). This ININ 18 material was developed by the Mexican National Institute of Nuclear Research (ININ by its acronym in Spanish). The parameters studied were: Separation absorption efficiency, flow ratio (L/G) values in order to find the load or turbulence regimen in absorption process, reboiler duty at desorption column, and column diameters at different treated flue gas flows. The results showed that Sulzer BX had the highest volumetric mass transfer coefficient values and the lowest height of mass transfer equivalent unit, with 3.76 s(-1) and 0.317 m, respectively, with 600 t/h flue gas flow, and the paper discusses the selection of most important parameters necessary to obtain 90 % capture rate and the lowest energy consumption for CO2 capture plants in comparison with respect to the other two packings. Sulzer BX packing shows decreased reboiler energy consumption with 8.5 MJ/kg CO2.