CO 2 Removal from Power Plant Flue Gas-Cost Efficient Design and Integration Study

This chapter focuses on the evaluation of various engineering options to reduce the costs of amine-based carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) capture from flue gas generated by a 400 MW natural gas fired combined cycle (NGCC) power plant. The objective of this study is to cut the cost of a post-combustion amine-based CO 2 capture process by 50-70%. Results from this study indicate that capital investment for post-combustion CO 2 recovery from gas turbine (GT) exhaust by monoethanolamine (MEA) can be reduced 40-55%. For a near-term MEA plant designed as an add-on to existing power plant, the capital cost can be reduced by 40% through alternate equipment selections such as using plate and frame (P&F) instead of shell and tube (S&T) exchangers, elimination of the flue gas cooler, using ANSI instead of API pumps, using structured instead of random packing, and by combining two 50% trains into one 100% train CO 2 compression. An ejector-assisted hot lean amine-flashing drum is added to reduce reboiling steam requirement by about 15%. All of the proposed changes are commercially demonstrated either for amine services or for other similar applications, and thus considered to have minimum risks.