Removal and recovery of compressed CO2 from flue gas by a novel thermal swing chemisorption process

A synopsis of the published literature on removal of CO2 from a flue gas is given. A novel thermal swing chemisorption (TSC) process concept is proposed for removal and recovery of compressed CO2 from a flue gas without precompression, predrying, or precooling. The process uses Na2O promoted alumina as a reversible CO, selective chemisorbent in conjunction with the principles of rapid thermal swing adsorption for direct production of compressed CO2 from a flue gas. Several complementary process steps are used in the design to compress the product CO2 and to achieve high CO2 recovery and sorbent capacity utilization. Judicious steam purge steps are used for highly efficient sot-bent regeneration and to minimize the steam requirement. The CO2 chemisorption characteristics of the sorbent are reviewed and a model simulation of the TSC process performance is reported. (C) 2008 American Institute of Chemical Engineers.