Onsite CO2 Capture from Flue Gas by an Adsorption Process in a Coal-Fired Power Plant

The feasibility and efficiency of adsorption technology were evaluated experimentally and theoretically for CO2 capture from the flue gas in an existing coal-fired power plant, where a three-bed VPSA unit was set up to test 282 kg of adsorbent materials. In this work, the experimental results are reported for zeolite 5A as the adsorbent. The composition of the flue gas after dehydration was 15.0 vol % CO2 76.5 vol % N-2, and 8.5 vol % O-2. With a three-bed seven-step VPSA process including rinse and pressure equalization steps, 85% CO2 was obtained with recovery of 79% from flue gas at a feed flow rate of 46.0 Nm(3)/h. The experimentally measured energy consumption was 2.37 MJ/(kg of CO2). The experimental work was compared with numerical simulations through the multibed VPSA modeling framework developed in a previous work. The simulated results were found to agree well with the experimental results.