Recently available pilot plant data from U.Texas-Austin for carbon dioxide (CO2) capture with aqueous monoethanolamine (MEA) solution have been investigated and simulated with RateSep, a second generation rate-based absorption & stripping unit operation model in Aspen Plus. After a brief review on RateSep, thermodynamic and kinetic models, transport property models, and U.T.-Austin pilot plant data set, we present model predictions against the pilot plant data and we show the superior predictions of the rate-based model over the traditional equilibrium-stage models. We further examine the impacts on simulation results of various rate-based modeling constructs, i.e., film discretization, flow mixing, interfacial area correlations, etc. In addition, we report the sensitivities of the process performance with respect to liquid to gas ratio, CO2 concentration in gas stream, CO2 loading and MEA concentration in lean MEA solution, operating pressure, packing height and packing type. The RateSep model with proper parameters provides excellent predictive capability for the process and it should be very helpful for industrial process and plant design.

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