Experimental Study of CO2 Impact on Aerosol Formation in Post-combustion Amine Scrubbing Process

Toshiba has studied reduction technologies against amine emissions with 10ton-CO2/day scale pilot plant and achieved the reduction of amine emissions to less than 1 ppm(v/v) at 2,800 hours operation. To further reduce amine emissions, we carried out experimental studies of CO2 impact on aerosol formation in the amine scrubbing process. It was found that a remarkable increase in the number of aerosols, especially lager particle, was observed due to CO2 existence. In addition, we also verified the role of CO2 loading on aerosol formation. As a result, It was found that the higher the CO2 loading became, the lower CO2 impacted on aerosol formation until finally under full loading, where a mutual interaction between CO2 and absorbent is no longer strong, the two properties of aerosols derived from both 12vol% CO2 gas bubbling and 0vol% CO2 gas bubbling match each other regardless of CO2 existence. Therefore, this result suggests that the mutual interaction effect between CO2 and absorbent plays a big role in the source of surge in aerosol formation. Moreover, this research revealed that the absorbents developed by Toshiba, specifically TS-1 have significant advantages over 30wt% MEA solution in terms of mitigating non-gaseous amine emissions from the top of the absorber.