Absorption process with aqueous solution of 2-(methylamino) ethanol for carbon dioxide removal from gas stream

Abstract

In power generation and petroleum industries, carbon dioxide can cause operational problems such as corrosion, and heating-value reduction. However, it can be used in many industries like food industries and in petroleum to enhance the oil recovery for oil production. However, the amount of carbon dioxide or supply is not enough because the cost of carbon capture is high. The main sources of carbon dioxide come from power plants and natural gas processing. The technology is carbon capture and storage. Currently, the effective technology to remove carbon dioxide to the lower level is chemical absorption and chemicals used in this technology play an important role. Nowadays, the commercially used solvents are monoethanolamine. Nevertheless, it also has disadvantages such as low capacity, corrosion and high energy requirement for regeneration; thus, making this technology not economically viable. Therefore, many new solvents such as 2-(methylamino)ethanol have been developed to improve efficiency and to compensate the drawbacks of conventional solution for carbon dioxide capture. Consequently, the aim of this work is to measure the solubility data of carbon dioxide in a 5M aqueous solution of 2-(methylamino)ethanol as a solvent at the temperature from 30 °C to 80 °C and partial pressures ranging from 5 to 100 kPa. The solubility results of carbon dioxide in 2-(methylamino)ethanol solution are compared with that of the aqueous solution of monoethanolamine at the same conditions. In term of cyclic capacities, the results show that 2-(methylamino)ethanol provides higher performance which is up to 86.8% and 150.9% higher than that of monoethanolamine at 15 and 100 kPa, respectively. Furthermore, the results present that the loading can increase as partial pressure increases and decrease at higher temperature. This can result in the decrease in energy requirement for solution regeneration and liquid-circulation rate, leading to the reduction in the overall cost of carbon capture.