Saparov, AblayTorkamahalleh, Mehdi AmoueiShah, Dhawal2019-02-072019-02-072019-01Saparov, Ablay (2019) Aerosol formation in ethanolamines based post combustion CO2 capture plants. Nazarbayev University School of Engineeringhttp://nur.nu.edu.kz/handle/123456789/3736In recent years, capture of carbon dioxide released from fuel-combustion has become one of the most important field operations. A commonly used process for carbon dioxide capture is applying a post-combustion-CO2-capture (PCCC) column with solvents like aqueous methyldiethanolamine (MDEA), monoethanolamine (MEA), and other amines. There are several reports indicating formation of aerosol in amine based PCCC columns, which in turn is associated with solvent losses. The purpose of this work was to investigate the mechanism of nucleation (leading to an aerosol or particulate matter formation) for three solvents (MEA, MDEA, and a mixture of MEA and MDEA) using the molecular dynamic simulations. Additionally, two cases with different solvent compositions, corresponding to industrial usage, were simulated. Using the simulations, role of different solvents were analyzed in order to identify the mechanism and rate of aerosol formation. The results provide insights to the structure and composition of the aerosol. In particular, we observed a highest growth for the case with aqueous MDEA solution, whereas nucleation was fast for MEA solutions. Furthermore, the rate of formation of aerosol increased with increasing CO2 concentrations. The formed aerosols mainly consisted of water, CO2, and the ethanolamines. Taken together, the result from this work contributes to better understand aerosol formation in PCCC columns.enAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United StatesMaster's thesis