Design, Development, and Operation of an Integrated Fluidized Carbon Capture Unit Using Polyethylenimine Sorbents

This paper presents the design, development, and operation of a reactor system for CO₂ capture. Modifications were implemented to address differences in sorbent from 180 μm Geldart group B to 115 μm Geldart group A material; operational issues were discovered during experimental trials. The major obstacle in system operation was the ability to maintain a constant circulation of a solid sorbent stemming from this change in sorbent material. The system consisted of four fluid beds, through which a polyamine impregnated sorbent was circulated and adsorption, preheat, regeneration, and cooling processes occurred. Pressure transducers, thermocouples, gas flow meters, and gas composition instrumentation were used to characterize thermal, hydrodynamic, and gas adsorption performance in this integrated unit. A series of shakedown tests were performed and the configuration altered to meet the needs of the sorbent performance and achieve desired target capture efficiencies. Methods were identified, tested, and applied to continuously monitor critical operating parameters including solids circulation rate, adsorbed and desorbed CO₂, solids inventories, and pressures. The working capacity and CO₂ capture efficiency were used to assess sorbent performance while CO₂ closure was used to define data quality and approach to steady-state. Testing demonstrated >90% capture efficiencies and identified the regenerator to be the process step limiting throughput. Sorbent performance was found to be related to the reactant stoichiometry. A stochastic model with an exponential dependence on the relative CO₂/amine concentration was used to describe 90% of the variance in the data.