Amine Absorber for CO2 Absorption

Absorber

Absorbers bring gas and liquid phases in contact, so that contaminants in the gas phase
absorb into the liquid phase as a result of their interaction. During absorption, soluble
components of a gas mixture dissolve into a liquid. As the two streams contact, mass transfer
of the soluble components takes place.

Based on equipment design, absorbers could be of different types namely

 Packed Bed
 Spray Columns
 Falling Film
 Bubble Columns
 Tray Columns

The main aim of absorber in industry is to strip off the impurities (contaminant gases) from a
gas mixture using a solvent.

Amine

In industry, different amines are used as a solvent in order to separate CO2 and H2S from
certain streams. The most common industries that use this technique are oil refineries and
natural gas processing industries.

Processes within oil refineries or chemical processing plants that remove hydrogen sulfide are
referred to as "sweetening" processes because the odor of the processed products is improved
by the absence of hydrogen sulfide. An alternative to the use of amines involves membrane
technology. However, membrane separation is less attractive due to the relatively high capital
and operating costs as well as other technical factors.
Many different amines are used in gas treating:

 Diethanolamine (DEA)
 Monoethanolamine (MEA)
 Methylediethanolamine (MDEA)
 Diisopropanolamine (DIPA)
 Aminoethoxyethanol (Diglycolamine) (DGA)

The most commonly used amies in industrial plants are the alkanolamines (DEA, MEA, and
MDEA). These amines are also used in many oil refineries to remove sour gases from liquid
hydrocarbons such as Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG).

Amine based Separation Process

Figure 1: Process flow diagram of a typical amine treating process used in petroleum
refineries, natural gas processing plants, and other industrial facilities.
Figure 1 shows a general amine-based gas treatment process which includes an absorber unit
and a regenerator unit as well as necessary equipment. In the absorber, the downflowing
amine solution absorbs H2S and CO2 from the up flowing sour gas to produce a sweetened
gas stream (i.e., a gas free of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide) as a product and an amine
solution rich in the absorbed acid gases. The resultant "rich" amine is then routed into the
regenerator (a stripper with a reboiler) to produce regenerated or "lean" amine that is recycled
for reuse in the absorber. The stripped overhead gas from the regenerator is
concentrated H2S and CO2.

Amine Concentration

The amine concentration in the absorbent aqueous solution is an important parameter in the
design and operation of an amine gas treating process. Depending on which one of the
following four amines the unit was designed to use and what gases it was designed to
remove, these are some typical amine concentrations, expressed as weight percent of pure
amine in the aqueous solution:

 Monoethanolamine: About 20-32 %

 Diethanolamine: About 20-25 %
 Methyldiethanolamine: 30-55 %
 Diglycolamine: About 50 %

MEA and DEA

MEA and DEA are primary and secondary amines. They are very reactive and can effectively
remove a high volume of a gas due to a high reaction rate. However, due to stoichiometry, the
loading capacity is limited to 0.5 mol CO2 per mol of amine. MEA and DEA also require a
large amount of energy to strip the CO2 during regeneration, which can be up to 70% of total
operating costs. They are also more corrosive and chemically unstable compared to other
amines.
Challenges of CO2 Capture

Challenges of carbon capture using amine include:

 Low pressure gas increases difficulty of transferring CO2 from the gas into amine.
 Oxygen content of the gas can cause amine degradation and acid formation.
 CO2 degradation of primary (and secondary) amines.
 High energy consumption.
 Very large facilities.
 Finding a suitable location (enhanced oil recovery, deep saline, basaltic rocks…) to
dispose of the removed CO2.

Currently, variety of amine mixtures are being synthesized and tested to achieve a more
desirable set of overall properties for use in CO2 capture systems. One major focus is on
lowering the energy required for solvent regeneration, which has a major impact on process
costs. However, there are tradeoffs to consider. For example, the energy required for
regeneration is typically related to the driving forces for achieving high capture capacities.
Thus, reducing the regeneration energy can lower the driving force and thereby increase the
amount of solvent and size of absorber needed to capture a given amount of CO2, thus,
increasing the capital cost.