Experimental evaluation of adsorption technology for CO2 capture from flue gas in an existing coal-fired power plant

Carbon dioxide capture from the real flue gas by adsorption technology was performed in an existing coal-fired power plant. The pilot-scale carbon capture plant consisted of a CO2 capture unit and a dehumidifying unit. The dehumidifying unit received the desulfurized flue gas from the power plant at a controlled flow rate, and supplied the dehumidified flue gas for the CO2 capture unit. In the dehumidifying unit, water vapor in the desulfuried flue gas was removed by adsorption on alumina. The three-bed eight-step vacuum pressure swing adsorption (VPSA) process was employed in the CO2 capture unit, where two types of adsorbent materials were tested, zeolite 13XAPG done in this work and 5A molecular sieve reported before (Liu et al., 2012. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 51, 7355-7363). Some key assessment parameters were measured onsite, including the flow rate of flue gas, CO2 recovery from flue gas, CO2 purity in the product gas, and power energy consumption to capture 1 kg of CO2 in order to evaluate the VPSA process for CO2 capture from flue gas.