Carbon dioxide capture from pulp mill using 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol and monoethanolamine blend: Techno-economic assessment of advanced process configuration

Highlights: • Two new advanced configurations for CO₂ capture in pulp mill was investigated. • A rate-based model in ProMax® 4.0 was used for modeling the CO₂ capture process. • Techno-economic assessment was analyzed for the new advanced configurations. • The combined effect of carbon tax and CO₂ sales price on the NBSK price was analyzed. • CO₂ capture plant in pulp mill only led to a slight increase in the NBSK pulp price. -- Abstract: This project study involves the techno-economic assessment of two new advanced configurations for amine-based carbon dioxide capture from a pulp mill. The newly proposed advanced configurations include advanced rich amine four split (ARA4S), and advanced rich amine three split with desorber inter-heating (ARA3S-DI) which is aimed at reducing carbon capture cost and carbon emissions. The rate-based model in ProMax® 4.0 was used for the simulation study while the flue gas was provided by a 365,000 air dry tonne of pulp (ADt Pulp) per annum pulp mill in British Columbia, Canada. Comparative analysis revealed that the Capture Cost (US$/tCO₂ and US$/ADt Pulp) of the 5 kmol/m³ MEA system was lowest for the conventional configuration, while for the 2 kmol/m³ AMP-3 kmol/m³ MEA blend it was lowest for the advanced rich amine 3-split with desorber inter-heating configuration. In addition, the Capture Costs of the MEA solution with a conventional configuration system is 8.7% higher than the AMP-MEA blend with advanced rich amine three split with desorber inter-heating configuration. Sensitivity analysis revealed that the combined effect of a carbon tax (US$ 40/tCO₂), CO₂ sales price (US$ 40/tCO₂) and advanced configuration only led to a slight increase (2.6% for MEA and 2.1% for AMP-MEA blend) in the price of the northern bleached softwood kraft pulp. With an even better-performing solvent system and process configuration, the price of NBSK pulp may not be affected given the indicated CO₂ tax and CO₂ price regime.