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Rate-based process modeling technology has matured and is increasingly gaining acceptance over traditional equilibrium-stage modeling approaches. Taylor et al. Chem. Eng. Prog. 2003, 99, 28−39 Recently comprehensive pilot plant data for carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) capture with aqueous monoethanolamine (MEA) solution have become available from the University of Texas at Austin. The pilot plant data cover key process variables including CO 2 concentration in the gas stream, CO 2 loading in lean MEA solution, liquid to gas ratio, and packing type. In this study, we model the pilot plant operation with Aspen RateSep, a second generation rate-based multistage separation unit operation model in Aspen Plus. After a brief review on rate-based modeling, thermodynamic and kinetic models for CO 2 absorption with the MEA solution, and transport property models, we show excellent match of the rate-based model predictions against the comprehensive pilot plant data and we validate the superiority of the rate-based models over the traditional equilibrium-stage models. We further examine the impacts of key rate-based modeling options, i.e., film discretization options and flow model options. The rate-based model provides excellent predictive capability, and it should be very useful for design and scale-up of CO 2 capture processes.
Zhang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.