Fawkes Stripper Tutorial

Process Description This process strips CO2 from the rich stream (RICH) generated by the Fawkes Absorber to regenerate the lean 7 m MDEA/2 m PZ solvent (LEAN) at a loading of 0.10 mol CO2/mol alkalinity. Before being fed into the stripper the rich solvent is pumped to stripper pressure (RICHPUMP) and sent through a cross-exchanger. The cross-exchanger is modeled as two heater blocks (HEATR and HEATL) with equal and opposite heat duties and a cold side approach of 5oC. Water vapor, CO2, and some amine are stripped and fed to a compressor train (not shown in flowsheet). The compressor work is calculated using a correlation developed by David van Wagener. Stripper height is fixed at 5 m, and the diameter is adjusted to guarantee 80% flood in the top of the stripper (stage 1). The lean solvent is pumped back to 1 atm and sent through the cross-exchanger. Before being sent back to the absorber, the solvent must be sent through a trim cooler (not shown in flowsheet) to get it back to 40oC. Converging a rate-based stripper simulation 1. Open either Fawkes Stripper.apw or Fawkes Stripper.bkp. 2. Reinitialize the simulation (Run Reinitialize). 3. Open the data browser (double-click on any stream or block in the flowsheet). Steps 4-7 are intended to establish a converged initial guess. If for any reason the simulation has to be reinitialized, steps 4-7 must be repeated. 4. Go to the rich-side cross-exchanger window (Blocks HEATR Input) and set the outlet temperature to 105oC. Use Temperature as a flash specification rather than Heat Duty. Leave the other flash specification as Pressure with a value of 0 N/m2. Go to the design specification window (Flowsheeting Options Design Spec) and deactivate both LDG and PRES by right-clicking on them and selecting Deactivate from the menu. LDG specifies the lean loading of the liquid leaving the stripper by adjusting the reboiler duty. PRES specifies the reboiler temperature by adjusting the stripper pressure. The target lean loading should be set to 0.10 mol CO2/mol alkalinity, and the target reboiler temperature should be set to 120oC. Go to the calculator window (Flowsheeting Options Calculator) and deactivate PPRES by right-clicking on it and selecting Deactivate from the menu. PPRES is designed to set the rich pump (RICHPUMP) outlet pressure equal to the stripper pressure. Because the design specification PRES will be adjusting the column pressure, the outlet pump pressure must also be adjusted. Open the control panel and run the simulation.

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Steps 7-13 sequentially activate the design specifications. Go to the calculator window and activate PPRES. Open the control panel and run the simulation. Go to the design specification window and activate PRES. Open the control panel and run the simulation. Before continuing check the lean loading calculator (Flowsheeting Options Calculator LEANLDG Results Define Variable). If the lean loading is drastically low (i.e. < 0.05) slowly decrease the reboiler duty (by no more than 5 MW per iteration) until the lean loading is more reasonable. If the lean loading is drastically high (i.e. > 0.20) slowly increase the reboiler duty (by no more than 5 MW per iteration) until the lean loading is more reasonable. 12. Go to the design specification window and activate LDG. 13. Open the control panel and run the simulation. 8. 9. 10. 11. Steps 14-18 convert the two separate heater blocks (HEATL and HEATR) into one crossexchanger. 14. Go to the rich-side cross-exchanger window and set the outlet temperature to 106oC. 15. Open the control panel and run the simulation. Repeat steps 14 and 15 (increasing the outlet temperature by 1oC on each iteration) until the outlet temperature is 108oC. 16. Go to the lean-side cross-exchanger results window (Blocks HEATL Results) and copy the heat duty. 17. Go to the rich-side cross-exchanger input window and change the temperature flash specification to a heat duty using the drop down menu. Paste the heat duty from the leanside cross-exchanger into the open cell. Make sure that the units used in both heater blocks are the same, and that the value of the heat duty in HEATR is positive (equal and opposite to the calculated duty in HEATL). 18. Open the control panel and run the simulation. It may take several minutes for the model to converge. Once it has finished running, compare the heat duties on HEATR and HEATL. If they differ by less than 0.1%, this exercise is complete. If they differ by more, repeat steps 16-18 until this condition is met. Sometimes it is possible to connect the two heaters via a heat stream. If you choose to connect HEATL and HEATR with a heat stream, be sure to delete the flash specification Temperature or Heat Duty in HEATR (simply delete the input value and the specification should deactivate).