Techno-economic study of enhanced absorber–regenerator configurations for improving an industrial Sulfinol-M-based acid gas removal processes

In this study, the rigorous simulation and design of an industrial Sulfinol-M-based acid gas removal (AGR) process was developed. All simulations were performed using Aspen HYSYS with extended NRTL activity coefficient model for the liquid phase and the Peng–Robinson state equation for the vapor fugacity coefficients. The simulation results from VMGSim and Aspen HYSYS were compared with design data from an integrated gasification combined cycle power plant. Several enhanced absorber–regenerator configurations were presented to improve AGR process efficiency. Sustainability analysis was conducted to assess these process alternatives in terms of energy requirements, costs, and environmental impacts. The results showed that the proposed self-heat recuperation configuration could reduce the energy requirements, total annual costs, carbon footprint by 74.7%, 40.1%, and 48.9%, respectively, compared with the conventional configuration.