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.