Volume 26: Closing Carbon Cycles – A Transformation Process Involving Technology, Economy, and Society: Part I

Absorption-based carbon capture energy penalty reduction for micro gas turbine applications: investigation of advanced carbon capture configurations. Antoine Verhaeghe, Lionel Dubois, Laurent Bricteux, Diane Thomas, Ward de Paepe

Abstract

Applying post-combustion Carbon Capture (CC) offers a solution to reduce CO2 emissions of micro Gas Turbines (mGTs). However, the conventional monoethanolamine-based (MEA) absorption-regeneration process was never found economically feasible for these small scales (5-500 kWe) due to the high energy consumption of this CC process, degrading the plant performance. Improving the CC configuration can help to reduce the CC energy penalty. To this end, two advanced configurations are investigated, the Rich Solvent Recycle (RSR) and the Rich Solvent Split (RSS) configurations, and applied to a typical mGT, namely the Turbec T100, through thermodynamic cycle modeling in Aspen Plus. The optimal operating parameters were first determined for each configuration to minimize the energy consumption. The results showed that by applying RSR and RSS, the CC reboiler duty could be reduced by 2% and 0.9%, respectively, compared to the conventional one. Moreover, the increase in mGT electrical efficiency is limited to 0.04% for both processes, demonstrating that such configurations do not provide significant benefits for mGT applications.

Keywords micro Gas Turbine, Absorption-based carbon capture, Rich Solvent Recycle, Rich Sovlent Split, Thermodynamic cycle simulations