Dynamic modeling of post-combustion carbon capture process based on multi-gate mixture-of-experts incorporating dual-stage attention-based encoder-decoder network

Solvent-based post-combustion carbon capture (PCC) technology is a promising, near-term solution for decarbonizing power generation and industrial facilities. Model-based process simulation is crucial for the optimal design and operation of the PCC process. Recently, data-driven models have gained attention due to their adaptability, efficient computation and high accuracy. However, the nonlinearity, strong couplings and multi-time scale features of the PCC process pose significant challenges for model identification. To this end, this paper proposes a multi-gate mixture-of-experts incorporating dual-stage attention-based encoder-decoder (MMoE-DAED) network for dynamic modeling of the PCC process under wide operating conditions. An encoder-decoder composed of long short-term memory (LSTM) network is employed to extract features from the time-dependent input data and learn the complex dynamic interactions caused by the inertial and delay properties of the process. Dual-stage attention mechanism is incorporated into the encoder and decoder respectively to select the most relevant input features and their correlations within the time series data. To enhance multi-output prediction accuracy, multi-gate mixture-of-experts (MMoE) framework that considers correlations of multitask learning is implemented. Simulation results using operating data from a PCC experimental setup indicate that the proposed modeling approach accurately predicts the steady-state values and dynamic trends of the CO₂ capture rate and stripper bottom temperature over a wide operating range. The RMSE, MAPE and R² indices for the CO₂ capture rate are 2.1592, 0.0295, 0.9641, respectively, and for the stripper bottom temperature are 0.1491, 0.0003, 0.9833, respectively. Validations on a PCC simulator further verify the accuracy and efficiency of the MMoE-DAED model, which enables an 80.87% reduction in computation time compared to the simulator. This paper points to a new direction for the data-driven dynamic modeling of complex energy conversion processes.