An experimental based optimization of a novel water lean amine solvent for post combustion CO2 capture process.

• Propose a new water lean amine solvent for CO 2 capture. • The low regeneration energy of K 2 Sol is demonstrated through pilot plant operation. • K 2 Sol presents superior performances about cyclic capacity and thermal stability. • GPBO is used as a new way to optimize operating conditions in pilot-scale testing. • K 2 Sol requires only 65% of regeneration energy of MEA. The development of new amine solvents without the major drawbacks of conventional amines is crucial to industrial applications of CO 2 capture. This paper presents a water-lean CO 2 capture solvent having a low regeneration energy and low degradation. The water-lean solvent, K 2 Sol, is a sterically hindered diamine; because of the hindered amine site, K 2 Sol easily forms bicarbonate, resulting in a high absorption capacity. The minimum solvent regeneration energy is obtained using Gaussian process Bayesian optimization (GPBO) and bench-scale pilot plant experiments. GPBO finds the optimal solution using the input and output relationship of experiments; thus, expensive first-principle model construction can be avoided. According to the pilot plant experiment, the optimal regeneration energies of monoethanolamine (MEA) and K 2 Sol are 4.3 and 2.8 GJ/t CO 2 , respectively, indicating that K 2 Sol requires only 65% of the regeneration energy of MEA. Fewer than 30 experiments are required to find the optimal pilot plant operation for both the MEA and K 2 Sol experiments. We also describe the superior properties of K 2 Sol in terms of the CO 2 loading, cyclic capacity, regeneration temperature, and degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]