Techno-economic analysis of mechanical vapor recompression for process integration of post-combustion CO2 capture with downstream compression

Post-combustion capture of CO2 using amine solvent is by far the most practical and mature technology, however, energy requirement for solvent regeneration still remains as the biggest obstacle to overcome. In this article, post-combustion CO2 capture process model was validated using experimental data of an existing test bed. Based on the validated model, mechanical vapor recompression (MVR) process is proposed which reduces thermal energy for solvent regeneration by recovering heat from compression process required for CO2 transportation. MVR process not only reduces the amount of steam extracted from the power plant, but can also serve as an interface between CO2 capture and compression for process integration. According to the simulation results, energy saving of 8.4% was observed in comparison with the base case, which is a conventional CO2 capture process followed by 2-stage compression. In addition to energy analysis, exergy analysis based on the 2nd law of thermodynamics and economic evaluation were performed to determine optimal operating condition of the MVR process.