Selection of efficient absorbent for CO2 capture from gases containing low CO2

Abstract

Amine-based absorption processes are widely used in natural gas processing, but recently they have been considered for CO2 capture from flue gas emitted from thermal power plants. The main issue of amine used in the CO2 capture process is the high cost of solvent regeneration. So, this issue can be solved by using efficient amine absorbent. The amine type absorbents employed in the experimentation were an aqueous blend of 2-(Diethylamino)ethanol (DEEA) with different types of diamine activators such as piperazine (PZ), 2-(2-aminoethylamino)ethanol (AEEA), hexamethylenediamine (HMDA), ethylenediamine (EDA), and 3-(Dimethylamino)-1-propylamine (DMAPA). An absorption experiment was performed to evaluate the CO2 absorption performance in terms of CO2 loading, absorption capacity, and absorption rate. The experiment was performed to assess the CO2 desorption performance in terms of desorption capacity, desorption rate, cyclic capacity, and regeneration efficiency. From the results of absorption-desorption and comparison with benchmark amine absorbent MEA, the aqueous blend of DEEA and HMDA indicated the best performance for CO2 capture applications among all the tested amine blends. © 2020, The Korean Institute of Chemical Engineers.