CO_2 Capture Performance Of Mea And Blended Amine Solvents In Csiro’S Pilot Plant With Flue Gas From A Brown Coal-Fired Power Station

摘要

Post-combustion Carbon Capture (PCC) is a key technology in a complete CO_2 capture andstorage (CCS) chain. Reactive liquid absorption processes are currently the most advanced,both in commercial and technological terms. The area of improved solvents for CO_2 is a focalpoint in many R&D programmes, in addition to more efficient PCC process engineering andoptimised process integration. CSIRO’s R&D programme in Australia is investigating allthese areas and this paper discusses solvent testing results with real flue gases.The performance of the solvents is determined by the inter-dependent relationships betweenthe following three parameters:1. CO_2 removal efficiency;2. heat requirement for solvent regeneration; and3. solvent loss as a result of evaporation/carry-over or solvent detoriation.The trials were conducted in CSIRO’s transportable PCC Pilot Plant - hosted by Loy YangPower, Australia - that has been capturing CO_2 from flue gas from the brown coal-fired powerstation since May 2008. After obtaining a base-line for the pilot plant using MEA, otherpromising amine blends have been tested in the plant during several campaigns. This paperdescribes the results to-date regarding the performance of the solvents in absolute terms andrelative to the MEA base case.The pilot plant results show that both MEA and blended amine solvent trials exhibit a goodCO_2 balance (<10% deviation). Both systems indicate a similar trend of increasing ratio of theliquid flow rate over the gas flow rate (L/G) and successive increase in CO_2 removal. Aremarkable reduction (4-34%) in heat-duty can be obtained by using blended amine solventsinstead of a 30 wt-% of MEA solution. A minimum reboiler heat-duty versus L/G ratio isclearly observed for the MEA-baseline.