Recently, studies have appeared pointing out that aerosols can dominate the total amine emission from amine based PCCC pilot plant scale installations. For the design of countermeasure types (upstream or downstream of the PCCC installation), it is crucial to have an idea of the aerosol size distribution and numbers entering or leaving the absorber. This study is the first to present this kind of data and should serve future installations when designing aerosol emission countermeasures. H2SO4 aerosols entering the absorber are observed to be extremely small (i.e. <0.2μm) with number concentrations exceeding 1E8cm-3. The aerosols grow in size as they travel through the absorber through the taking up of water and amine to sizes close to but staying below 1μm. However, despite the fact that most of the aerosols (expressed in number concentrations) are well below 1μm, most of the water (and thus amine) is found in the aerosol sizes between 0.5 and 2μm. Therefore, if one aims at designing efficient countermeasures, eliminating this size fraction is crucial. This amine emission stream is therefore very difficult to remove using water washes as aerosols are known to travel through water wash sections. Moreover, also classical demisters show very little efficiency for these small aerosol sizes and are therefore believed not to be suitable for the removal of aerosols. This information will therefore serve future installations when designing aerosol emission countermeasures.@en

This study is to our knowledge the first to evaluate the potential of a wet electrostatic precipitator (WESP) to prevent aerosol formation issues inside amine based carbon capture installations. A WESP is a suitable option since this study proves that it is very efficient for the removal of the mist precursors inside the flue gas to be treated. Although a significant capital investment cost may be involved, energy requirements (i.e. low pressure drop), maintenance and therefore operational costs are expected to be very low. However, it is shown here that the WESP must be installed at the right location, i.e. the flue gas to be treated must contain no or very low levels of SO2. The reason is that the WESP's aerosol removal efficiency decreases strongly in the presence of SO2 gas and in a certain range also with increasing voltages. This limits the positive effect that the WESP has on reducing the MEA emissions from the absorber since a large number of mist formation precursors remain in the flue gas. In the presence of SO2, a WESP can actually produce H2SO4 aerosols. It is shown that these newly created aerosols are very small (low nanometre range). This information is very important for future pilot and demo amine carbon capture installations thinking of implementing a WESP as countermeasure to aerosol formation issues. It implies that no or very low levels of SO2 should still be present in the flue gas before entering the WESP. Since most of the amine carbon capture installations have a pre-scrubber (usually using NaOH to remove residual SO2 in the flue leaving the power plant's FGD) in front of their amine absorber, the WESP must be installed behind this pre-scrubber and not in front of it.@en

Amine based solvent used for SO4 capture can be lost during the process due to: degradation, vaporization, mechanical losses and aerosol (mist) formation. Only recently, studies have appeared pointing out that aerosols can dominate the total amine emission at pilot plant scale behind coal fired power plants. Future full scale amine scrubber installations will be imposed emission limit values (ELV) for a number of components including NH3 and the amine itself. Most likely these ELV will be expressed as maximum concentrations tolerated in the SO4 poor flue gas leaving the stack so it is important to prevent or cure amine aerosol emission. The study presents a novel combination of two existing measurement techniques, that measure: (i) amine emissions from the top of the absorber using FTIR and (ii) PSD of the incoming flue gas using the ELPI+. The study is the first to show how combining these two measurement techniques allows to predict the presence or absence of mist formation. This hypothesis is based on information obtained during several measurement campaigns on different pilot plants.@en