Techno-Economic and Energy Assessment of the Pressure Swing Adsorption Process for CO ₂ Capture from Flue Gas Using Shaped MOF MIL-160(Al): Bridging Experimental Results into Industrial Implementation

This work provides an integrated techno-economic and energy assessment of vacuum pressure swing adsorption (VPSA) for postcombustion CO2 capture, bridging laboratory-scale validation with industrial-scale design. The shaped MOF MIL-160(Al) was evaluated through 19 dynamic PSA experiments, which clarified the distinct roles of purge and rinse steps in determining the separation efficiency. The validated process model reliably captured cyclic steady-state dynamics and was extended to simulate 31 industrial VPSA configurations. The results demonstrated that as purge flow increased from 500 to 7.5 × 103 L/min, CO2 purity reduced from 91% to 82%, but CO2 recovery increased from 65% to 96%, which corresponds to an enhancement in energy consumption from 1589.2 to 1655 kWh. On the other hand, when rinse flow enhanced from 30 × 103 to 39 × 103 L/min, CO2 purity increased from 82% to 89%, while CO2 recovery reduced from 90% to 86% and energy consumption increased from 1573.5 to 1657.9 kWh. Techno-economic analysis estimated a total capital investment of $18.89 M and an annualized capital expenditure (CapEx) of $1.82 M·yr–1, with operating costs dominated by electricity consumption and, to a lesser extent, labor cost. Overall, the findings prove that industrially viable deployment of MIL-160(Al)-based VPSA requires a combined focus on plant equipment lifetime and process-level energy optimization, thereby providing a clear roadmap for translating experimental performance into large-scale CO2 capture.