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Raman spectra of aqueous monoethanolamine of various loadings showing peak evolvement for six major chemical species.

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Chemical absorption using hot potassium carbonate (K2CO3) is believed to be a more energy‐efficient post‐combustion CO2 capture technology as compared to conventional amine‐based absorption processes. That notwithstanding, literature information on how process modifications could render this technology more appealing are limited. In this study, seven different modified process configurations have been investigated to observe their impacts on the system performances of a typical hot K2CO3‐based capture system. The results demonstrate that flue gas precooling is capable of improving the carbon removal level in the K2CO3‐based capture system by 11.46% over the base case value. This was achieved by precooling the flue gas stream from 110 to 70°C before feeding into the absorber column. Other modified process systems such as the rich solvent pre‐heating and lean vapour compression were equally observed to decrease the specific stripper reboiler duty by 24.28% and 21.38%, respectively. The findings from this research prove that process modifications are capable of enhancing the system performances of the hot K2CO3‐based post‐combustion CO2 capture technology. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

It is evident from several researches that combining a couple of process modifications is effective in reducing reboiler duty in the chemical absorption‐based carbon capture process. Although extensive works on these combined modifications exist in literature, studies on combined lean vapour compression (LVC) and rich solvent preheating (RSP) are unavailable, despite their potentials as promising energy‐saving technologies. This simulation‐based study therefore explored standalone and combined process modifications capable of minimizing reboiler duty in monoethanolamine (MEA)‐based postcombustion CO2 capture system. Using the electrolyte nonrandom two‐liquid (ELECNRTL) property method in Aspen Plus®, a rigorous rate‐based simulation was performed and validated for conventional MEA‐based capture system. Subsequently, three main process modifications, namely, LVC, RSP and combined LVC and RSP, were investigated to evaluate their impact on energy consumption level in the stripping column. The modifications were able to reduce the total equivalent electrical penalty on the power plant by 12.94%, 5.24% and 14.48%, respectively. The results from this study demonstrate that a detailed optimization of the combined LVC and RSP process configuration could achieve considerable energy saving in MEA‐based capture systems.