| Coal-fired power plants produce electricity by coal combustion and emit carbon dioxide (CO2), a major greenhouse gas contributing to global climate change, to the atmosphere. One of many solutions to reduce such CO2 emissions is to integrate an alkanolamine-based CO 2 absorption process into the downstream end of the power plant as a flue gas post-combustion treatment unit. However, foaming is one of the most severe operational problems in this absorption process causing adverse impacts on process integrity and process cost. Unfortunately, knowledge of foaming is very scarce since no information of foaming is presently available for this relatively new application of a CO2 absorption process in coal-fired power plants.;A foam model was developed for an alkanolamine-based CO2 absorption process fitted with sheet-metal structured packing. The model was built upon the principles of fluid flow pattern, column hydrodynamics, and foam formation mechanism and was verified with the experimental foam data with an average absolute deviation (AAD) of 16.3%. Simulation results show that the model has the capacity for determining possible foam sites and process conditions where foaming is likely to occur and for evaluating foaming impacts on process throughput. The presence of degradation products and corrosion inhibitors induces more foam volumes in the absorber.;In this study, the foaming tendency of this process was experimentally evaluated using the pneumatic method modified from the ASTM standard and then reported in terms of foaminess coefficient (Sigma). The results show considerable effects of the tested parameters on Sigma. Following these experimental studies, a foam height correlation was developed to predict pneumatic steady-state foam heights for the MEA-based CO2 absorption process and was built on the correlation of Pilon et al. (2001). The simulation results show that the model fits well with our experimental foam data with R 2 of 0.88 and can be used to describe foaming behaviour with respect to changes in process conditions. |
