A Single Stage Membrane Process for CO2 Capture from Flue Gas by a Facilitated Transport Membrane

Carbon dioxide is the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas and it accounts for about 80% of all greenhouse gases (GHG). The global atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been increased significantly and have become the major source responsible for global warming; the greatest environmental challenge the world is facing now. The efforts to control the GHG emissions include the recovery of CO2 from flue gas. In this work, feasibility analysis, based on a single stage membrane process, has been carried out with an in-house membrane program interfaced within process simulation program (AspenHysys) to investigate the influence of process parameters on the energy demand and flue gas processing cost. A novel CO2-selective membrane with the facilitated transport mechanism has been employed to capture CO2 from the flue gas mixtures. The results show that a membrane process using the facilitated transport membrane can also be considered as an alternative CO2 capture process and it is possible to achieve more than 90% CO2 recovery and 90% CO2 purity in the permeate with reasonable energy consumption compared to amine absorption and other capture techniques.