Within the EU-funded project CAPSOL, capture units for three different power plants were designed. The solvents used were aqueous amine solutions; feed compositions and main process conditions were first determined using equilibrium-based simulations. As the main evaluation criterion, reaching a CO2 absorption degree of 90 % with minimum energy requirements was selected. The equilibrium based simulations did not take real column design and internals into account. Therefore, a more rigorous, rate- based approach was used in our work to determine necessary column heights. It was shown that an absorption degree of 90 % is not always realizable and even not always required.
