Assessing the Performance of Aspen Plus and Promax for the Simulation of CO2 Capture Plants

Abstract

Carbon dioxide is a prominent greenhouse gas whose emissions have significantly increased due to human activities. Fossil fuel-fired power plants are the largest source of CO2 emissions, which results in a need for CO2 capture at these power plants. Prior to building a large scale CO2 capture plant, a pilot or demonstration plant is set up to confirm the feasibility of the plant. Simulation techniques are needed before actually constructing the plant, in order to improve the reliability and to increase productivity. A number of simulation software tools have been developed and are widely used to complete the simulation of a power plant integrated with a CO2 capture plant. Therefore, the capability of the software to model and simulate the plant correctly, and to generate accurate and reliable results, is of particular importance. In this work, the performance of two of the most commonly used process simulators for CO2 capture, namely ASPEN Plus and PROMAX, was evaluated and compared. In order to achieve this goal, eight data series from two CO2 capture pilot plants were selected and simulated with the above-mentioned simulators. The pilot plant data came from the International Test Centre for CO2 Capture (ITC) and the Esbjerg CO2 from Capture to Storage (CASTOR) project. Simulations were compared to experimental results using several parameters, including CO2 recovery, lean and rich loadings, steam and heat duties, CO2 percentage in the product stream, and the temperature and concentration profiles in the columns. Results showed that both software packages could predict the behavior of the system accurately and generate reliable results. The obtained results showed that in most cases, particularly in predicting the absorber and stripper profile along the column, PROMAX generated results that were closer to the actual experimental data, when compared to ASPEN.