Towards Zero CO2 Emissions Fossil Fuel Power Plants

Carbon Capture and storage from fossil fuel power plants has gained the attention of scientists as an effective method to control greenhouse gas emissions. A post-combustion CO2 capture has been conducted using ASPEN Plus V10 software based on amine absorption /desorption for flue gas from natural gas combined cycle power plant. This optimization aimed to investigate the required solvent flowrate required thermal energy and the economic analysis for 90% capture rate of the CO2 in the first case and 99% in the second case. The CO2 absorption using monoethanolamine (MEA) as a solvent has been used in both processes. The obtained results showed that increasing the capture rate from 90% to 99% causes an increase in the solvent flow rate by 12%. Also, the increase in the capture rate causes an increase in the CAPEX by 6% and an increase in the OPEX by 9%. The Thermal heat duty for MEA regeneration was also increased by 10%. The obtained results showed an increase of less than 15% in most of the parameters which are feasible to capture 99% of the CO2 from NGCC with MEA at a reasonable energy cost.