Pilot Test and Simulation of An Advanced Amine Process for CO2 Capture

Pilot Test and Simulation of an Advanced Amine Process for CO₂ Capture

Xi Chen, Barath Baburao, Frederic Vitse^*

Alstom Power, 1409 Centerpoint Blvd, Knoxville, TN 37932

An Advanced Amine Process (AAP) was extensively tested in the Alstom Power pilot plant facility located at Växjö, Sweden. The performance of a proprietary solvent X was evaluated under varied flow schemes.

The test campaign comprised several series of tests, including energy consumption at varied ratio of liquid to gas flow rate in absorber with 90% CO₂ removal, effect of absorber packing height, and energy performance under advanced flows schemes as compared to conventional ones. With advanced flow schemes, the energy demand for CO₂ separation excluding CO₂ compression work was reduced by 13% - 21% compared to the conventional flow scheme, at 90% CO₂ capture.

The predictive capability of Procede Process Simulator was examined against the pilot plant data for absorber and regenerator. The correlations for mass transfer and interfacial area developed by The University of Texas at Austin were implemented for the rate-based modeling of Mellapak 2X absorber packing. The comparison between the simulation results and the pilot plant data shows that the model is capable of satisfactorily predicting the performance of AAP under different process conditions and configurations. Comparison of the simulation to the experimental results in terms of deviation for key parameters is summarized in the following Table.

Table 1.      Deviation between simulation and experimental results for AAP performance. 

Predicted Variable	Average Absolute Deviation (AADa)	BIASb
Absorber CO2 removal percentage (wrt. Liquid)	4.7%	-0.8%
Absorber outlet amine solvent flow rate	1.1%	-0.5%
Absorber rich loading	2.7%	-0.4%
Stripper lean Loading	2.8%	-0.2%
Stripper outlet gas flow rate	14.8%	-6.5%
Stripper gas temperature at the outlet of the column (K)	3.4c	-1.3 c
Stripper outlet amine solvent temperature (K)	0.4c	0.3 c

a:

b:

number of data points

c: For temperature, the arithmetical mean value of deviation is used.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-865-560-1732; fax: +1-865-560-1642.

E-mail address: frederic.vitse@power.alstom.com.