Technical evaluation of Selexol-based CO2 capture process for a cement plant.

Abstract

Cement industry accounts for the second largest emitter of anthropogenic greenhouse gas in the globe with 900 kg CO2 emitted into the atmosphere from producing one tonne of cement. Hence, the effort made to mitigate this issue seems not productive , which gives rise to the design of the carbon capture and sequestration [CCS] process which is one of the few ways obtained to greatly reduce CO2 production from the cement plant. The research work assessed the technology used for the cement plant by employing an old cement plant with post-combustion CO2 capture using physical solvent (Selexol). The Aspen Hysys simulation results show that the process can capture 97% of the CO2 and lean loading of 0.37. The Ashaka Cement Plant operates at maximum capacity of approx. 1 million tonnes cement /year with CO2 released at about 500,000 tonnes per year. The capture unit was able to reduce the CO2 released into the atmosphere from 4.86% to 0.13%. The overall result of the analysis shows that selexol has proven to be thermally and chemically stable under the operating conditions used. It is recommended that, the simulation results should be retrofitted into the Ashaka cement plant, in order to determine the best CO2 capture efficiency, performance which results to the choice of this capture technology.