Post-combustion slipstream CO2-capture test facility at Jiangyou Power Plant, Sichuan, China: facility design and validation using 30% wt monoethanolamine (MEA) testing

摘要

Given the dominant share of coal in China’s energy-generation mix and the fact that 50% of the power plants in the country are currently 15 years old, efforts to significantly reduce China’s CO2 footprint will require the deployment of CO2 capture across at least part of its fleet of coal-fired power plants. CO2-capture technology is reaching commercial maturity, but it is still necessary to adapt the technology to regional conditions, such as power-plant design and flexible operation in the China context. Slipstream facilities provide valuable field data to support the commercialization of CO2 capture. We have built a slipstream facility at Jiangyou power plant in Sichuan that will allow us to explore China-relevant issues, especially flexible operation, over the next few years. We plan to share our results with the broader CO2-capture and CO2-storage (CCS) community to accelerate the deployment of CCS in China. This paper describes the design of the slipstream facility and presents results from our steady-state qualification tests using a well-studied benchmark solvent: 30% wt monoethanolamine (MEA). The results from our MEA tests compare favorably to results reported from other slipstream-test facilities around the world, allowing us to commission our system and establish a reference baseline for future studies.