Simultaneous optimization of multi-stage membrane systems for CO2 capture from a coal fired power plant

ANA MARISA ARIAS; MIGUEL MUSSATI; NICOLAS SCENNA; SERGIO MUSSATI

Paris

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

University of Extremadura, Spain/C3i/Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre, Portugal

This paper deals with the optimal arrangement, size and operating conditions of multi-stagemembrane systems for CO2 capture from a CO2/N2 gas mixture with low CO2 concentration. Severalattractive multi-stage membrane arrangements are embedded in a superstructure. Then, a non linearprogramming NLP mathematical model is proposed in such a way to determine the optimal number ofstages 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 oftotal membrane area must be allocated into the stages in order to maximize the CO2 recovery and toguarantee 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 theavailable total membrane area is presented.