Design of Amine-Containing CO2-Selective Membrane Process for Carbon Capture from Flue Gas

A two-stage membrane process featuring a partial retentate recycling is designed for using amine-containing facilitated transport membranes to decarbonize flue gases from pulverized coal power plants. A methodology of technoeconomic analysis is also developed to evaluate their technical feasibility for this separation modality. In order to account for the dependence of CO2permeance on the CO2partial pressure, the carrier saturation behavior was modeled and integrated into the process evaluation. The sensitivity study has revealed that the partial retentate recycling is the enabling factor to reduce the system footprint and energy consumption. Moreover, the mitigated carrier saturation has led to an uprising CO2permeance upon bulk CO2removal. These two features have resulted in an attractive calculated capture cost of $41.75/tonne by facilitated transport membranes that have been realized experimentally.