Simulation and optimization of novel CO₂ direct steam stripping process based on the experimental results

The technology of CO₂ direct steam stripping is considered as a promising way to solve the high energy penalty problem in the chemical post combustion CO₂ capture process, which based on the absorber of MEA. A packed column was set up to investigate the impacts of steam flow rate, steam superheated temperature, preheat temperature of the rich solvent, column pressure and the packing material via experimental and modeling approaches. The results show that the steam flow rate and the temperature of rich solvent impact significantly on the CO₂ regeneration rate, while the influence of the steam temperature superheated temperature is relatively small. The influence of column pressure to the CO₂ regeneration rate varies with the steam flow rate changing. And the CO₂ regeneration rate increases with the column pressure increasing under different stream flow rate. The CY packing material shows the best CO₂ regeneration performance among the five kinds of tested packing material. The novel process can reduce the regeneration energy to 3 MJ per kilogram CO₂ or even lower in the optimization condition.