The possibility of energy saving in chemical absorption technology integrated with low concentration emission sources

Reducing CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion is emergent, especially for China. As one of the most concerned techniques in CO₂ capture process, the rather high energy consumption and cost in chemical absorption process is the leading obstacle interfering the development and deployment of CCS. In this paper, the energy consumptions during chemical absorption process in the literatures were collected, where the data distributions indicate that developing advanced absorbents may be a more efficient way in energy saving compared with improving separation process. Thus, a further verification is carried out based on idea separation process. Results show that improving separation process has limited possibility in reducing energy consumption compared with developing advanced absorbents, and the potential in improving separation efficiency for the former is one third as much as the latter.