Simultaneous optimization of multi-stage membrane systems for CO2 capture

ANA MARISA ARIAS; MIGUEL MUSSATI,; SERGIO F. MUSSATI; NICOLÁS J. SCENNA

Paris

Conferencia; International Conference on Chemical and Biochemical Engineering (ICCBE15); 2015

C3i/Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre (Portugal) and University of Extremadura (Spain)

This paper deals with the optimal arrangement, size and operating conditions of multi-stage membrane systems for CO2 capture from a CO2/N2 gas mixture with low CO2 concentration. Several attractive multi-stage membrane arrangements are embedded in a superstructure. Then, a non linear programming NLP mathematical model is proposed in such a way to determine the optimal number of stages and their interconnections, sizes and operating conditions. Given the flue-gas specification (flowrate, temperature and composition), the optimization design consists in determining how fixed values of total membrane area must be allocated into the stages in order to maximize the CO2 recovery and to guarantee a CO2 purity of 90.00 %. A detailed discussion of how the optimal number of stages, sizes, operating conditions, CO2 recovery and purity and the total power required by compressors vary with the available total membrane area is presented.