Comparison of MEA and DGA performance for CO2 capture under different operational conditions

Carbon capture and storage from flue gases is the most common method to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Using a primary amine as the solvent of CO2 capture unit is popular because of its high activity and ability to be used for streams with low concentration and low partial pressure of CO2. Monoethanolamine(MEA) and Diglycolamine(DGA) are the most common kinds of primary amines which have been traditionally used in many natural gas sweetening plants. In this research, the capture plant has been designed for these two solvents at various CO2 concentrations in the feed flue gas. This paper proposes different possible alters to overcome the high energy requirements of capture plant. It also presents the results of technical evaluation of different parameters, in order to design an actual plant with minimum energy requirement. The results of different parameters show that for DGA solvent, there will be an improvement in overall energy usage in the capture plant rather than MEA for some special cases. To gain the practical results, actual stages have been used for absorber and stripper instead of equilibrium stages. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.