Simulation of Post-Combustion CO2 Capture, a Comparison among Absorption, Adsorption and Membranes

Post-combustion CO2 capture was studied in the favorable context where the captured CO2 can be reused in a neighboring industrial process. Three technologies for CO2 capture, absorption by amines, adsorption on activated carbon, and separation using polymer membranes, were considered, modeled and compared. The three capture processes were designed for achieving the same performances. The models were integrated in a commercial flowsheeting software. The results show that, for a targeted CO2 purity of 95 %, the membrane process appears to be the least energy consuming. A next step will be to quantify the environmental benefits using life cycle assessment.