International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control 47 (2016) 137–150 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control j ourna l h o mepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijggc Performance evaluation of PACT Pilot-plant for CO 2 capture from gas turbines with Exhaust Gas Recycle M. Akram a,∗ , U. Ali a , T. Best b , S. Blakey a , K.N. Finney a , M. Pourkashanian a a Energy 2050, Energy Engineering Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK b Faculty of Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 17 July 2015 Received in revised form 24 November 2015 Accepted 29 January 2016 Keywords: Post-combustion CO2 capture Gas turbines Exhaust Gas Recycle Process modelling Specific reboiler duty a b s t r a c t Exhaust Gas Recycle (EGR) is one of the technologies used to increase the CO 2 concentration in the gas turbine flue gas. This paper presents the results of an experimental campaign carried out at the Pilot-scale Advanced Capture Technology (PACT) facilities at the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre (UKCCSRC). A 100 kW e Turbec T100 PH microturbine was integrated with a post combustion CO 2 capture plant that has a CO 2 capture capacity of one ton per day. The impact of different CO 2 concentrations (representing a range of EGR ratios) on the post-combustion CO 2 capture process was experimentally evaluated using 30% (wt.%) Monoethanolamine (MEA) solvent. It was observed that the specific reboiler duty was reduced by around 7.1% per unit percentage increase in CO 2 concentration. Overall, it was seen that the higher the CO 2 concentration, the lower the specific reboiler duty at a fixed capture rate. Both rich and lean solvent loadings increased with increase in flue gas CO 2 concentration. Energy balance on the stripper has shown that steam generation rate and condenser duty increases with increase in CO 2 concentration. The experimental data was used to develop and validate the model for the Pilot-scale amine capture plant using Aspen HYSYS. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction According to a recent report published by the Energy Tech- nologies Institute (Day, 2015), deployment of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) will save tens of billions of pounds (up to 1% of the GDP by 2050) from the annual cost of meeting climate change tar- gets compared to non CCS technologies. Delays in deploying CCS would require advancing other ways of cutting emissions, such as substantial moves away from gas heating in the 2020s, which are risky and more costly. A complete failure in CCS deployment would result is doubling the annual cost of carbon abatement. According to the report, deploying 10 GW of CCS capacity by 2030 will deliver high value for the UK economy. In the power sector, gas is still a major player in the UK and will become more so over the next few decades. According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), in 2010, 40% of the UK energy was from gas. In the next few years, many of the existing coal-fired power stations in the UK are expected to ∗ Corresponding author at: Energy 2050, Energy Engineering Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Arts Tower – First Floor, Western Bank, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK. E-mail address: m.akram@sheffield.ac.uk (M. Akram). close and will be replaced primarily by natural gas and renewables (DECC, 2011). It seems likely that for energy security, ahead of CCS deployment, a wave of investment is required in unabated gas fired power plants in early 2020s (Day, 2015). This shift in the fuel mix of the UK to natural gas means that the de-carbonisation of the electricity system required to meet the UK’s emissions reduction targets beyond 2020 cannot be achieved without CO 2 capture and storage technology deployed to gas fired power stations (Bassi et al., 2012). Post combustion CO 2 capture utilising liquid solvents is by far the most developed and understood process (Thimsen et al., 2014) as it has been applied in urea manufacturing and gas sweetening process for decades. However, its application to the power sector is relatively new. Though feasible, the process poses many challenges due to the presence of impurities in the power plant flue gases. However, the most significant challenge is the energy penalty caused by the capture process which will increase electricity production costs. The problem is more significant in the case of gas fired power plants due to low partial pressure of CO 2 in the flue gas produced by gas turbines. The CO 2 concentration is limited by metallurgical constraints due to which gas turbine combustion systems are very lean. The cost of CO 2 capture from gas fired power plants can be reduced by enhancing the concentration of CO 2 in the exhaust gas. One of the technologies to increase the concentration http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijggc.2016.01.047 1750-5836/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.