Designing a supercritical steam cycle to integrate the energy requirements of CO2 amine scrubbing

Absorption by chemical solvents combined with CO2 long-term storage appears to offer interesting and commercial applicable CO2 capture technology. However one of the main disadvantages is related to the large quantities of heat required to regenerate the amine solvent that means an important power plant efficiency penalty. Different studies have analyzed alternatives to reduce the heat duty on the reboiler and the thermal integration requirements on existing power cycles. in these studies integration principles have been well set up, but there is a lack of information about how to achieve an integrated design and the thermal balances of the modified cycle flowsheet. This paper proposes and provides details about a set of modifications of a supercritical steam cycle to overcome the energy requirements through energetic integration with the aim of reducing the efficiency and power output penalty associated with CO2 capture process. Modifications include a new designed low-pressure heater flowsheet to take advantage of the CO2 compression cooling for postcombustion systems and integration of amine reboiler into a steam cycle. It has been carried out several simulations in order to obtain power plant performance depending on sorbent regeneration requirements. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.