Development and cost estimation of green gas reduction process for power plant

The systematic and quantitative approach on the environmental pollution is a significant challenge in highly regulated industries, such as power plants, where a large amount of waste gas including greenhouse gas must be discharged. Various CO₂ reduction processes were simulated and the total cost of those were estimated. An environmental pollution impact was analyzed by the process operating conditions. The simulation of the CO₂ reduction process for three absorbents (MEA (monoethanolamine), M-H amine solution, T-D amine solution) in the same operating condition was presented. The simulation results included CO₂ recovery rate and CO₂ mole fraction in CO₂-rich gas of each absorbent. The efficiency of the M-H solution was almost same with the MEA solution ∼ 99% and the efficiency of the T-D amine solution was only 90%. When the reboiler duty of the M-H solution was changed 623 into 600 MJ/hr, the CO₂ recovery rate was optimal and the energy consumption was decreased simultaneously. The total cost of the M-H solution process was lower than that of the MEA M-H solution process about $1602/yr. The suitability of each CO₂ recovery process and the optimal operating conditions of CO₂ reduction processes for a power plant was evaluated. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the AIChE Annual Meeting (Austin, TX 11/7-12/2004).