Techno-economic process design of a commercial-scale amine-based CO₂ capture system for natural gas combined cycle power plant with exhaust gas recirculation

Post-combustion CO₂ capture systems are gaining more importance as a means of reducing escalating greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, for natural gas-fired power generation systems, exhaust gas recirculation is a method of enhancing the CO₂ concentration in the lean flue gas. The present study reports the design and scale-up of four different cases of an amine-based CO₂ capture system at 90% capture rate with 30 wt.% aqueous solution of MEA. The design results are reported for a natural gas-fired combined cycle system with a gross power output of 650 MW_e without EGR and with EGR at 20%, 35% and 50% EGR percentage. A combined process and economic analysis is implemented to identify the optimum designs for the different amine-based CO₂ capture plants. For an amine-based CO₂ capture plant with a natural gas-fired combined cycle without EGR, an optimum liquid to gas ratio of 0.96 is estimated. Incorporating EGR at 20%, 35% and 50%, results in optimum liquid to gas ratios of 1.22, 1.46 and 1.90, respectively. These results suggest that a natural gas-fired power plant with exhaust gas recirculation will result in lower penalties in terms of the energy consumption and costs incurred on the amine-based CO₂ capture plant.