Process design and simulation of the HERCCULES solvent-based post-combustion CO2 capture pilot for cement plants

This work presents the design of a solvent-based post-combustion CO2 capture pilot to be tested on real cement flue gases. The pilot plant, employing solvent-based CO2 absorption/stripping in packed columns, has been designed to capture and produce 3 t per day of high purity liquid CO2 from a slip stream of flue gases from a cement kiln. Process design is performed via Aspen Plus V14 simulations considering 30% w/w aqueous MEA as chemical solvent. More than 10 configurations featuring several modifications to the standard post-combustion process have been evaluated and characterized in terms of equivalent energy consumption. The process configuration featuring the integration of absorber intercooling, rich solvent split and lean vapor recompression is one of the most energy efficient and it reports a substantial reduction (18% savings) in the equivalent energy consumption compared to the conventional CO2 capture MEA process.