A feasibility study of CO2 capture from flue gas by a facilitated transport membrane

Carbon dioxide accounts for about 80% of all greenhouse gases (GHG) and thus becomes the major source responsible for global warming which is considered as the greatest environmental challenge the world is facing. The efforts to control the GHG emissions include the recovery of CO2 from flue gas. In this work, a feasibility analysis has been carried out with an in-house membrane program interfaced within process simulation program (AspenHysys) to investigate the influence of process parameters on the energy demand and flue gas processing cost. A novel CO2-selective membrane with the facilitated transport mechanism has been employed to capture CO2 from the flue gas mixtures. The results show that a membrane process using the facilitated transport membrane is feasible, even for low CO2 concentration (10%) in flue gas, compared to amine absorption in terms of energy requirement and it is possible to achieve more than 90% CO2 recovery and with a purity in the permeate above 90% CO2. Different process configurations are presented showing the effect of process conditions on the energy demand and gas processing cost to obtain 90% recovery and 90% purity.