Heat integration, process design and techno-economic assessment of post-combustion carbon capture using piperazine for large-scale ethylene plant

With the development of increasingly larger ethylene plants and the associated requirement to reduce carbon emissions effectively, there is a growing need to explore approaches that reduce the cost and energy consumption in carbon capture from ethylene plants. In this study, the flue gas heat recovery (FHR) strategy was proposed and implemented for different configurations of piperazine (PZ)-based post-combustion carbon capture (PCC) process applied to an ethylene plant with a capacity of 60,000 t/year. Four different cases of the PZ-based PCC process with or without FHR were simulated in Aspen Plus® V11 to explore the cost reductions and energy saving potential. The advanced flash stripper (AFS) configuration with FHR and absorber inter-cooling achieves a minimum regeneration energy requirement of 2.28 GJ/tonCO₂, a reduction of 37.71 % compared to standard PCC configuration using MEA solvent. The economic evaluation was carried out using Aspen Process Economic Analyzer® (APEA). The results show that the carbon capture cost using AFS configuration with FHR and inter-cooling can reduce to 47.27 $/tonCO₂, a reduction of 36.76 % against the standard PCC process using MEA. The proposed technology presents significant technical and economic benefits for the large-scale deployment of carbon capture for ethylene plants.