Carbon capture has been recognized
as an attractive alternative
to reduce CO2 emissions. The most feasible technology that
can be developed at a commercial-scale in a short-term period is CO2 capture by absorption since it is an end-pipe technology
that can be installed in existing coal-based power plants and will
not require retrofit of the power plant. The most studied CO2 capture process is absorption using monoethanolamine (MEA) and represents
the benchmark solvent because of the favorable properties it has shown
such as fast kinetics, high absorption capacity, good solubility in
water, and low price. On the other hand, this solvent is susceptible
to thermal and chemical degradation, and it is also corrosive. Nevertheless,
the main drawback of this solvent is the energy consumption needed
for solvent recovery (almost >90% of the plant’s operating
cost). Ionic liquids (IL) are new alternative solvents for CO2 capture. Experimental results have shown that IL feature
chemical and thermal stability, and good CO2 absorption
capacity. In this work, a theoretical IL is used as physical solvent
for developing a new flow-sheet of a CO2 capture plant.
A techno-economic analysis was carried out to evaluate the feasibility
of the proposed design. The results show that the IL-based plant features
lower energy demand compared to a traditional MEA-based plant. Moreover,
the dynamic analysis performed in this study provides insight on the
degree of nonlinearity and the dynamics of the process, which are
essential tools to design suitable control schemes. The results show
that the plant can accommodate perturbations in the flue gas flow
rate up to ±10% while meeting CO2 recovery and purity
targets.