Experimental studies of regeneration heat duty for CO2 desorption from diethylenetriamine (DETA) solution in a stripper column packed with Dixon ring random packing

• The regeneration heat duty of DETA was experimentally evaluated in a bench-scale stripper packed with Dixon ring.
• The regeneration heat duty of DETA was very sensitive to the operational parameters within the range presented in this work.
• The regeneration heat duty of DETA was lower than that of MEA for the same amount of CO2 released.

The regeneration heat duty (Qreg, kJ/kg CO2) is a critical parameter in the post-combustion CO2 capture process using a chemical solvent. In this study, the Qreg of CO2 desorption from CO2 rich diethylenetriamine (DETA) solutions was experimentally evaluated in a bench-scale stripper column packed with Dixon ring random packing. The experiments were conducted to evaluate Qreg over a solvent flow rate (L) range of 2.92–11.69 m3/m2 h, amine concentration (C) range of 1.0–4.0 kmol/m3 and CO2 cyclic capacity (Δa) range of 0.21–0.79 mol/mol. It was found that Qreg was greatly influenced by all the three factors. In addition, a comparison of the regeneration performances between DETA and monoethanolamine (MEA) was performed to evaluate the potential for DETA’s application in the CO2 capture process. The results obtained in this work showed that for regeneration at the same absorption capacity, the heat duty of DETA was lower than that of MEA.