Review of design correlations for CO2 absorption into MEA using structured packings

A good knowledge of design correlations is essential to provide the best possible scale-up data in order to know and remove technical risks related to the design and operation of a full scale CO2 capture plant. Hydrodynamics and mass transfer correlations for structured packed columns have been compared for two cases: absorption of CO2 from gas-fired power plants and absorption of CO2 from coal-fired plants to take account of the impact of operating conditions and hydraulics of a packed column in a large scale CO2 capture plant. The study showed that there is a large uncertainty associated with applying the proposed correlations in a large scale of packed column. The uncertainty can be explained by three main factors: (i) the model which correlations developed is based on; (ii) the data for development and verification of the models, and (iii) the calculation approach which is related to mathematical expressions (complexity of the model). (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.