Design a Solar Thermal System for a Carbon Capture Pilot-Scale Plant
Asiri, Jaber
Graduate Student
Mechanical Engineering
Romero, Carlos E.
text
theses
2019-05-01
2019
Lehigh University
eng
electronic documents
application/pdf
With increasing global energy consumption and need for smart, cleaner electricity, theworld demands responsible power generation. The majority of the world primary power generationis still based on fossil fuels which contributes to increasing greenhouse gas emissions andconsequent climate change. Integration of solar energy with fossil fuel-based power plants is aneffective solution that can mitigate carbon emissions.Post-combustion carbon capture is one of the promising technologies that mitigates carbondioxide (CO2) emissions, but it has associated with it, heat and electricity requirements for the CO2capture process and the CO2 compression systems. In solvent-based carbon capture systems, therequired thermal energy is always extracted from low-pressure steam from the power plant to meetthe reboiler duty in the carbon capture reboiler. This results in a decrease in unit efficiency andpower generation. A possible way to overcome this drawback is by employing solar-assisted postcombustion carbon capture which would significantly compensate on the power plant due toabsorbent regeneration. In this approach, a solar thermal system is integrated with an amine-basedcarbon capture process.This study focused conducting a preliminary design on how to couple a concentrated solarthermal plant to carbon capture pilot-scale plant in Mexico. This thesis also discusses theadvantages of the methodology to get the optimal results of the coupling. This further providesguidance on the possible ways to fully design and integrate solar thermal energy with post-carboncapture.
Mechanical engineering