Study of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Absorption in Single MEA andMixMEA&DEA

Increasing amount of carbon dioxide (C02) in the atmosphere has lead to growing
interest in research for new methods to reduce it because of the global warming
effect. Fossil fuel combustion for energy generation is the main source of carbon
dioxide emissions. Alkanolamine is one of the commercial solvent in removing CO2
from flue gas. The objective of this study is to study the CO2 absorption in
monoethanolamine (MEA) and to determine the optimum percentage of mix amines
for optimum absorption. From previous research, mixed amine has been found can
improve the CO2 absorption and great savings in regeneration energy requirement.
The experiment is conducted in experimental setup which is almost similar to gas
bubbler method with various MEA concentrations (15wt%, 20wt% and 28wt%),
varying solvent speed (2rpm and 5rpm), and varying mixtures of amines (MEAI5wt%
+ DEA-5wt%, MEA-20wt% + DEA-10wt%, and MEA-25wt% + DEA-
10wt%). From the experiment that has been done, the higher the solvent speed the
higher the C02 removal efficiency. The C02 removal efficiency also increase when
the concentration of amine increases. The reaction temperature is higher for higher
concentration of MEA and for higher solvent speed. The optimum blend of amines is
MEA-20wt% and DEA-10wt% which has high C02 removal efficiency, no
significant corrosion problem, and low regeneration energy. Foaming is a bad
phenomenon to the absorption process unit. It might cause the equipment damage
and loss of production time. From this study it also has been found that the foaming
increase when the speed of the solvent increase from 2rpm to 5rpm. It is also
expected that the higher the MEA concentration, the higher the foaming height and
the higher the collapse time.
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