A Single Stage Membrane Process for CO2 Capture from Flue Gas by a Facilitated Transport Membrane

Carbon dioxide is the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas and it accounts for about 80% of all greenhouse gases (GHG). The global atmospheric CO₂ concentrations have been increased significantly and have become the major source responsible for global warming; the greatest environmental challenge the world is facing now. The efforts to control the GHG emissions include the recovery of CO₂ from flue gas. In this work, feasibility analysis, based on a single stage membrane process, has been carried out with an in-house membrane program interfaced within process simulation program (AspenHysys) to investigate the influence of process parameters on the energy demand and flue gas processing cost. A novel CO₂-selective membrane with the facilitated transport mechanism has been employed to capture CO₂ from the flue gas mixtures. The results show that a membrane process using the facilitated transport membrane can also be considered as an alternative CO₂ capture process and it is possible to achieve more than 90% CO₂ recovery and 90% CO₂ purity in the permeate with reasonable energy consumption compared to amine absorption and other capture techniques.