A review of research facilities, pilot and commercial plants for solvent-based post-combustion CO2 capture: Packed bed, phase-change and rotating processes

Large-scale CO2 abatement is key to avoid the detrimental environmental impacts of increased CO2 emissions worldwide. Solvent-based absorption is a mature post-combustion capture technology for short- to medium-term implementation. However, high energetic requirements, capture costs and technical challenges have been prohibiting its wide industrial deployment. Extensive research efforts have enabled significant improvements that resulted in scaling-up of pilot plants to industrial-level systems and commercial installations. This work provides a detailed review of these activities for plants of different capacities in 37 locations worldwide. The presented information pertains to: a) baseline, packed bed, absorption/desorption flowsheets, originally developed for alkanolamines, b) flowsheets with significant structural modifications that increase the operating driving forces, c) flowsheets including modifications for phase-change solvents and d) flowsheets that incorporate rotating packed beds (RPB). Technical details are presented regarding tested solvents, energetic performance, operating conditions, types and capacity of equipment, emissions, degradation and corrosion. It is observed that energy recovery in the stripper enables significant regeneration energy reduction, as proven in a commercial-scale plant. Equivalent performance has also been achieved with the chilled ammonia process in large-scale pilots. Liquid-liquid phase-change solvents and RPBs exhibit high potential for operating and capital expenditure reductions, but require significant scaling-up effort. Research in RPBs includes mainly lab-scale, mass transfer investigations. Several large-scale plants are being developed in China.