CO2 capture by vacuum pressure swing adsorption from dry flue gas with a structured composite adsorption medium

In this work, a novel structured composite adsorption medium (CAM) with corrugated flow-through channels for CO2 capture was investigated and a two-bed six-step vacuum pressure swing adsorption (VPSA) process was proposed to initially capture CO2 from a simulated dry flue gas consisting of 85% N-2 and 15% CO2. The adsorption capacities of the novel structured composite adsorption medium were measured under various adsorption temperatures and pressures conditions to study the capacity for CO2 capture, while the performances of VPSA process had been evaluated in terms of purity and recovery, as well as energy consumption and productivity, through dynamic simulation of the cyclic adsorption process. Specifically, a rigorous and reasonable mathematical model was established in simulation process to precisely describe the dynamic behavior of multiple components in adsorption bed. The effects of various operating parameters on the simulation process performance were discussed, including feed flow rate and desorption pressure. As the result, an effective separation performance of 40.08% CO2 purity, 96.55% CO2 recovery and 2.40 molCO(2)/kg(ads)/h productivity with an energy consumption of 414.86 kJ/kgCO(2), was finally got with the optimal parameters, while the feed flow rate and desorption pressure were 1833.3 NL/min and 0.1 bar, respectively. These findings indicated that the utilization of novel structured composite adsorption medium as adsorbent could achieve large scale of flue gas separation and further reduce the energy costs of CO2 capture process, as well as suggesting there were many advantages of structured composite adsorption medium, such as low energy consumption.

Automated summary

The novel structured composite adsorption medium showed promising potential for CO2 capture, while the VPSA process achieved high purity and recovery rates with reduced energy consumption and increased productivity. Optimization of operating parameters led to effective separation performance, including 40.08% CO2 purity, 96.55% CO2 recovery, and 2.40 molCO(2)/kg(ads)/h productivity.