Efficient Utilization of Industrial Excess Heat for Post-combustion CO2 Capture: An Oil Refinery Sector Case Study

Paper in proceedings, 2014

A key issue in post-combustion carbon capture is the choice of absorbent. In this paper two different absorbents, monoethanolamine (MEA) and ammonia (NH3), have been modeled in Aspen Plus at different temperatures for possible implementation at an oil refinery. The focus of investigation is the possibilities of heat integration between the oil refinery and the carbon capture process and how these possibilities could change in a future situation where energy efficiency measures have been implemented. The results show that if only using excess heat from the refinery for heating of the carbon capture process, the MEA process can capture more CO2 than the NH3 process. It is shown that the configuration requiring least supplementary heat when applying carbon capture to all flue gases is MEA at 120 °C. The temperature profile of the excess heat from the refinery suits the MEA and NH3 processes differently. The NH3 process would benefit from a flat section above 100 °C to better integrate the heat needed to reduce slip, while the MEA process only needs heat at stripper temperature.