Design of a Rapid Vacuum Pressure Swing Adsorption (RVPSA) Process for Post-combustion CO2 Capture from a Biomass-fuelled CHP Plant

Mauro Luberti, Gabriel David Oreggioni, Hyungwoong Ahn

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

It is aimed to design a novel RVPSA (Rapid Vacuum Pressure
Swing Adsorption) unit for CO2 concentration and recovery in order to
achieve the aggressive CO2 capture target, i.e. 95+% CO2 purity and 90+%
CO2 recovery at the same time, applied to an existing 10 MWth biomassfuelled
CHP plant. Biomass-fuelled CHP plants are principally carbonneutral
so there is no CO2 addition to the atmosphere as a result of its
operation if CO2 emissions involved in soil enhancement, biomass
transport and processing are ignored. Furthermore, integrating the
biomass-fuelled CHP plant with carbon capture, transport and storage
enables carbon-negative energy generation, as its net effect is to
recover some CO2 in the air and then store it underground through this
plant operation. A RVPSA process features more efficient utilisation of
the adsorbents in the column, leading to much higher bed productivity
than a conventional adsorption process. Such a high bed productivity of a
RVPSA makes it easier to scale up this process for its application to
industrial post-combustion capture. A two-stage, two-bed RVPSA unit was
designed and simulated to capture CO2 from a biomass-fuelled CHP plant
flue gas containing 13.3% CO2 mole fraction. Effects of operating
conditions such as the Purge-to-Feed ratio (P/F) and desorption pressure
on the specific power consumption were investigated in detail. It was
found that the productivity of the RVPSA unit designed in this study was
20-30 times higher than those of the conventional CO2 capture VPSA
processes.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3973-3982
JournalJournal of Environmental Chemical Engineering
Volume5
Issue number4
Early online date20 Jul 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2017

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • Biomass
  • CHP Plant
  • CO2 CAPTURE
  • Rapid Vacuum Swing Adsorption
  • Bed Productivity
  • Process simulation

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