China’s first pilot‐scale demonstration of post‐combustion CO 2 capture from a natural‐gas‐fired power plant

The CO 2 concentration of flue gas from a natural‐gas‐fired power plant is only about 50% of that from a coal‐fired plant. In contrast, the O 2 concentration is more than double, which makes it more difficult to capture CO 2 from the former source. China Huaneng Group, which is the largest power generation company in the world, has demonstrated post‐combustion CO 2 capture (PCC) in two coal‐fired plants at a scale of 3 kt/y and 120 kt/y, and has now developed the capture technology for gas‐fired power plants for the first time in China. A 100 kg/h CO 2 capture pilot plant from natural‐gas‐fired flue gas has been built and the technology verification program has been conducted continuously for 4000 h. In this work, a novel PCC system with mechanical vapor recompression (MVR) was introduced, and the secondary pollutants from the absorber, material corrosion, solvent loss, and energy penalty during the verification test were investigated. From the aspect of pollutants control of the tail gas from the absorber, the volatile solvent content is less than 0.17 ppm, and total nitrosamine is less than 3 μg/Nm-super-3. Compared with the traditional regeneration mode of steam, the energy penalty can be reduced by 10%∼15% by using the novel Steam‐Flash‐MVR system. This indicates that the system and process is technically feasible for CO 2 capture from natural gas power plant, the solvent used is robust and reliable in long‐time operation with a low corrosion and degradation rate. © 2015 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd