To make the PCC better suited for power plants, growing interest has been directed to the flexible operation of PCC in the past ten years.

Solvent-based post-combustion CO2 capture (PCC) appears to be the most effective choice to overcome the CO2 emission issue of fossil fuel fired power plants. The results have shown that with an appropriate and well-tuned control strategy, it is possible to maintain critical parameters, such as the degree of CO2 capture, at the desired set-point, even during periods of significant fluctuation in the power plant load and even if based on simple and well established control technologies, such as PID, avoids the need for more risky solutions such as adding solvent storage tanks to the process. In addition, economically efficient control structures for operation of a post-combustion capture process with minimum energy requirements for coal and natural gas power plant are designed. In this paper a process control strategy is developed in order to select the optimal control variables for a PCC process.

However, the application of optimal control strategies can offer solutions to these operational challenges, associated with the integration of the power plant with the capture plant. With increasing penetration of intermittent renewable energy into the electricity grid, one can expect thermal power plants to be required to operate in a more dynamic fashion, with more frequent departures from design point operation. A dynamic rate-based model was developed for stripping in CO removal by 1% at the reduced steam rate and provided faster response of the stripper to a step change in the reboiler heat rate.

Restore istripper models