INDUSTRIAL DESIGN AND OPTIMIZATION OF CO2 CAPTURE, DEHYDRATION, AND COMPRESSION FACILITIES

On an industrial scale process, a comprehensive engineering design and optimization study was conducted for CO2 capture, dehydration, and compression facilities based on flue gases from natural gas and coal fired power plants. The HTC designer solvent was utilized in this chemical absorption process to achieve CO2 recovery targets from 80 to 90%. The captured and conditioned CO2, with more than 99 mol % purity, was compressed to 150 barg and sent out at the boundary limit for enhanced oil recovery applications. The main design and engineering factors affecting the CO2 capture, dehydration, and compression processes have been highlighted in this paper. The study provides a feasible engineering design and acceptable production cost taking into consideration all the technical, economic, and plant location factors. The study shows that it is advantageous to use the HTC designer solvent over the conventional monoethanolamine (MEA) solvent mainly due to its lower steam consumption, solvent losses, circulation rate, and cooling water requirements. Based on the objective function, the assumed industrial constraints, and the plant location factor, the production cost is estimated to be about 49 US$/ton CO2 for the 90 % CO2 recovery of 4.0 mol % CO2 content in the flue gas of a natural gas combined cycle power plant. However, a substantial reduction in the production cost was reported for higher CO2 contents in the flue gas of a coal power plant. For a similar CO2 production capacity of 3307 ton per day from a 12 mol % CO2 content in flue gas of a coal fired power plant, the production cost is about US $ 30/ton CO2. This substantial reduction in the production cost is mainly because of the higher CO2 contents in the flue gas