Chemical Engineering Transactions (Jun 2023)
Thermodynamic Validation of CESAR1 Model and Effect of Water Wash Configurations
Abstract
Validation of thermodynamic models used in process simulators is important to ensure that predictions are accurate and can be used with high degree of confidence. Vapor-liquid equilibrium is one of the important parameters to be validated when using process simulators to design, simulate and optimized CO2 capture processes. In this work, the thermodynamic model implemented in ProTreat® of CESAR1, a blend of 1.5 M piperazine (PZ), and 3.0 M 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol (AMP) is validated against experimental data. Currently, literature data is available only at absorber/desorber conditions. New data under water wash conditions will soon be available (under the Sustainable OPEration of post-combustion Capture plants, SCOPE, project) when the ProTreat® model will be updated to take account of the new dataset. Nonetheless, the current model already shows good agreement with literature. Recent pilot validations have confirmed that the software is accurate to use for designing CO2 capture plants. An evaluation of the water wash (WW) effect on the amine volatile emissions was also performed. Different WW configurations were tested for a generic post-combustion CO2 capture process. It was observed that the double WW configuration was most suited for CESAR1 if volatile amine emissions were required to be below 1 ppmv. Water balance was also greatly impacted by WW configuration and operating conditions and should be considered when designing this step in the process.