Techno-economic evaluation of post-combustion carbon capture based on chemical absorption for the thermal cracking furnace in ethylene manufacturing

As the core unit of an ethylene production plant, thermal cracking furnace generates a large amount of CO₂ emissions. To reduce the CO₂ emissions, post-combustion carbon capture based on chemical absorption using monoethanolamine (MEA) solvent is used to capture CO₂ from the thermal cracking furnace. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method was used to simulate the operation of a 60kt/a thermal cracking furnace to obtain the flow rate and composition of the flue gas. A carbon capture plant model was developed using Aspen Plus® and validated using the pilot plant test data from Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM) in Norway. Scale-up of the capture plant model was carried out to match the flue gas flow rate of the thermal cracking furnace. Two integration cases of the carbon capture plant and the industrial thermal cracking unit were carried out. The results show that the excess heat of the gasoline fractionator can be used to provide heat for the carbon capture plant without affecting ethylene production. The economic evaluation was conducted based on the two case studies. Results show that the cost of CO₂ capture can be reduced from $80.03/tonne (without heat integration) to $70.41/tonne with heat integration. When considering the impact of carbon credits on capture costs, the cost will be further reduced to $50.41/tonne.