Reclaiming of Monoethanolamine (MEA) Used in Post-Combustion CO2-Capture with Electrodialysis

Heat-stable salts (HSS) in amine-based solvents may lead to a long-term performance impairment of post-combustion CO2-capture process system. They can cause a loss of solvent capacity, corrosion, heat exchanger fouling, increased foaming or flooding, etc. The application of electrodialysis (ED) can be a possible cost effective technique for removal of HSS from degraded amine solutions. The paper presents the results of lab-scale ED experiments on HSS removal from synthetic degraded MEA solutions with different HSS content and CO2-loadings. The efficiency of ED-process for reclaiming of MEA solvent is shown. The influence of solvent CO2-loading on the specific energy consumption of ED-process is presented. The lab-scale data have been used for design and manufacturing of a pilot ED plant. Within the OCTAVIUS project it has been planned to test the ED-pilot plant at the EnBW post-combustion CO2 capture pilot plant. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).