Carbon dioxide amine strippers

In Europe, the TNO [27] and Kvaerner [19] are both developing contactors to remove water and carbon dioxide from natural gas. Glycol or amines are used as the absorbent fluid. The goal is to reduce the size and weight of the unit to allow use on offshore platforms, so oftentimes only the absorber, the largest piece of equipment in a traditional absorber/stripper, is replaced with a membrane contactor. Kvaerner has taken this technology to the demonstration phase and commercial units are expected to be introduced soon. 

In this case, carbon dioxide reacts reversibly in the adsorber with aqueous alkaline solutions to form a carbonate adduct (configuration 1). This adduct decomposes in the stripper upon heating. In early ammonia plants, an aqueous solution of 15-20 wt % monoethanolamine (MEA) was always standard for removing CO2. Primary alkanolamine solutions, however, require a relatively high heat of regeneration so that, nowadays, secondary and tertiary ethanol amines are mainly used. 

In the low-pressure amine absorption system, a low stripper pressure is used to keep stripper reboiler duty as small as possible. In the high-pressure TEG absorption system, there is a smaller dependence of reboiler energy on pressure. A higher pressure in the stripper reduces the compression costs to raise the recovered carbon dioxide gas up to the required pipeline pressure for sequestration. Therefore, there is an optimum economic stripper pressure (ISOpsia) that balances compression costs with stripper reboder energy cost. The stripper distillate is cooled to 110 °F to minimize the amount of water in carbon dioxide gas product from the stripper reflux drum. Diameters of the columns are very large due to the enormous throughput. 

---