Integration of rich and lean vapor recompression configurations for aqueous ammonia-based CO2 capture process

Post-combustion carbon capture (PCC) using a chemical solvent is the most mature and well-proven technology to mitigate carbon dioxide (CO2) emission. However, substantial energy consumption for solvent regeneration is still a critical challenge for widespread deployment of this PCC. In this study, a novel low-energy, combined rich and lean vapor recompression (RLVR) process for the CO2 capture process using dilute aqueous ammonia (NH3) solvent was developed and optimized by integrating of rich vapor recompression (RVR) and lean vapor recompression (LVR) approaches. A parametric study showed that the minimum total equivalent work can be obtained when CO2 loading and NH3 concentration of lean solution are 0.275 mol CO2/mol NH3 and 5.0 wt%, respectively and the pressures of stripper, rich and lean solvent flash drums are maintained at 10.5 bar, 4.62 bar and 6.93 bar, respectively. Under such operation conditions, the total equivalent work required for a CO2 capture plant was remarkably reduced to 0.123 kW h/kg of CO2 captured, which is equivalent to about 10% energy penalty. This amounts to 26–54% reduction from recent literature reports. Furthermore, this combined RLVR process can completely eliminate the need of reboiler, leads to improving the flexibility of the capture plant since it can be separated from power plant steam systems.