Steady-state energy optimization and transition assessment in a process of CO2 absorption from natural gas

Abstract

An industrial-scale MDEA-based CO2 absorption process is considered in this work. Natural gas plant of Aguaragüe Argentina is selected to perform the studies of optimization and dynamics. With the steady-state of the process simulated, the reboiler energy demand of the plant is optimized in Aspen Hysys v8.8. In this optimization study, we analyze the base case (current) conditions of the reference plant and also six disturbance scenarios. According to the results, the main energy requirement can be reduced in more than a 48%, with the current process design. In the second part of our work, the plant is simulated in dynamic mode with the aim of characterizing the transition towards the found optimal conditions. It is proved that the dynamic model can reproduce the specified values after a short-time. In addition, the absence of undesirable states during the stabilization proves that the current control scheme is appropriate to minimize the energy consume in the plant under study.