Understanding Solvent Degradation: A Study from Three Different Pilot Plants within the OCTAVIUS Project

Degradation of amines is one of the most important issues to be addressed for absorption-desorption based post-combustion CO₂ capture. Several laboratory studies have been performed to identify the degradation products and understand the mechanisms of degradation. However, there seems to be a gap in knowledge from translating the lab scale studies to observations from the pilot campaigns. Moreover, the observations from different pilot plant campaigns can be quite different. The objective of this study is to compare the solvent degradation behavior from different campaigns and highlight their causes in terms of solvent metal content and ammonia emissions. Results from the following different pilot plants are evaluated: (a) TNO's CO₂ capture plant at Maasvlakte, the Netherlands, (b) EnBW's CO₂ capture plant at Heilbronn, Germany and (c) ENEL's CO₂ capture plant at Brindisi, Italy. The different rate of oxidative degradation are correlated to the different operating conditions and layout of the pilot plants. Along with these results, kinetic models based on laboratory studies are used to compare the pilot plant observations, highlighting the differences between lab-scale studies and pilot plant studies.