Energy saving in a CO2 capture plant by MEA scrubbing

The most commonly used process for the CO2 capture is absorption by means of chemical solvents such as alkanolamines. This consolidated technology can be applied to CO2 removal from natural gas, refinery gas, and exhaust gas of power plants. This paper focuses on CO2 capture from exhaust gas by absorption with monoethanolamine (MEA). A commercial simulation software, namely Aspen Plus®, is used, with Electrolyte-NRTL thermodynamic package where ad hoc parameters, obtained from regression of experimental solubility data for the system CO2–MEA–H2O, have been implemented. The comparison among different schemes is based on energy saving. Both the reboiler heat duty and the total equivalent work (which sums up every work and heat contribution in the purification section) are considered as criteria for comparison.