SIM 4800 Flue Gas Carbon Capture

Model Description

A CO2 rich flue gas stream is contacted with a secondary Amine/Water stream in a packed bed absorber column. The reaction between CO2 and amine produces water soluble compounds which are absorbed into the amine stream. 

The treated flue gas is passed into a water wash spray column which removes amine entrained in the treated gas. The treated gas is then vented to the environment. 

The rich amine stream from the absorber is passed into an accumulator and then a heat recovery system. The rich amine is contracted with a stream of hot lean amine returning from the regeneration column. This stream then passes into the regeneration column. 

A steam reboiler supplies heat which reverses the amine/CO2 reaction. The top column gas is air cooled to remove any water and amine, the then pure CO2 stream can be compressed and piped to CO2 storage. 

The regenerated amine from the bottom of the column is passed into the heat recovery system, filtered, and cooled to be passed back into the absorber column. 

Learning Areas

• Understand the innovative process of post-combustion carbon capture and the mechanism by which CO2 is removed from a flue gas stream using a secondary amine. 
• Can analyse the economic viability of CO2 capture for different processes. 
• Understand process optimisations such as heat recovery. 

• Understand process interaction between columns, building on the idea that no unit operation exists in isolation, building on distillation column understanding. 
• Understand how to start up the carbon capture plant. 
• Understand how to operate the plant with variable flow rates of flue gas from the combustion process. 
• Understand how to safely shut down the carbon capture plant. 
• Understand how to respond to process upsets, alarms, and interact with an Emergency Shutdown (ESD) system.