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Chemical solvents such as alkanolamines that are used for CO2 capture from flue gases are vulnerable to quality deterioration which causes a number of operational challenges due to the accumulation of degradation products and other types of impurities within the solvent. To maintain solvent absorption efficiency and avoid operating problems, it is important to continuously remove the accumulated contaminants from the solvent by including a reclaiming process within large commercial CO2 capture plants. The new HTC solvent reclaimer system, called delta Reclaimer, has been integrated within the 800 ton per day CO2 amine capture plant at the Searles Valley Minerals Facility (SVM) to remove the undesirable contaminants from a solvent slipstream and return the clean solvent back to solvent circulation in the CO2 plant. The detailed analysis of the feed stream, product stream and waste stream shows that the delta Reclaimer is capable of removing most of the undesirable impurities and restoring the solvent to its original purity at a high recovery rate and minimum energy consumption. At normal operating conditions the recovery rate of the MEA solvent reaches 98% and the steam consumption is about 1 lb steam (40 psig) per 1 lb of recovered solvent. Very concentrated waste is collected periodically while the reclaimer process is in continuous operation. This technique contributed to a huge reduction of the quantity of waste collected for disposal.

Densities, viscosities, refractive indices, and electrical conductivities of both artificially degraded and industrially degraded monoethanolamine (MEA) solutions are measured at a standard temperature of 293.15 or 298.15 K. These physical property measurement data are not currently available for the degraded MEA solutions, and the reported values are particularly important for monitoring solvent quality and plant performance. The data can be used to provide an estimation of the total degradation products' build-up level in the solvent with a simple measurement by the CO 2 plant operators, which would avoid using complex equipment and lengthy laboratory techniques. The data could also be useful for the CO 2 capture plant designers to consider the impact of the degradation products on the physical properties of the solvent.

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