Reduction and Capture of Green House Gas Emissions from an Oil Refinery with Amine/Piperazine- and Amine/Sulfolane-Based Solvents

This paper focuses on the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) from petroleum/petrochemical refineries which are predominantly in the form of CO2. A refinery located in the Gulf is selected and methodologies to reduce and capture CO2 are presented. The refinery emits approximately 775 tonnes/year CO2. A sound energy policy, robust process control, careful operation of motor driven equipment and process heaters could lead to appreciable reduction of these emissions. After reduction, the capture of remaining CO2 emissions with PZ (piperazine) and sulfolane-based smine solvents is simulated and optimized to get minimum re-boiler duty in the stripper. The process simulator ASPEN software is used for simulations. The optimization results indicate that PZ-based amine solvent performs better than sulfolane-based amine when H2S in the flue gas is in small amounts. The re-boiler duty seems to depend upon the temperature of the stripper feed. It is proposed that heat exchanger design be improved that exchanges heat between lean and rich amines.