Review paper

ABSTRACT

Acid gas such as carbon dioxide (CO 2) and hydrogen sulphide (H2S) has become a major

problem in industrial nowadays. The sour gas usually present in natural gas and industrial gas

need to be removed for environment and economical benefits.

INTRODUCTION

Recently, the emission of sour gas such as carbon dioxide (CO 2) and hydrogen

sulphide (H2S) has become major problem in industries. To encounter these problem lots of

research and development has been done. Chemical and physical absorption are widely used

for separation of sour gas in petroleum and chemical industries [ CITATION Emm \l 1033 ].

However, if dealing acid gas such as CO 2 and H2S physical absorption is preferred. Usually,

chemical solvents that use for absorption of CO 2 are aqueous solution of amine group. These

solution include are primary, secondary, tertiary, hindered amine and formulated mixed

amine. Among these amine group the solvents that is extensively being used for absorption of

sour gas nowadays is monoethanolamine (MEA). The reason of this type of amine commonly

used is due to low solvent cost and also high reactivity towards CO 2 absorption.[ CITATION

BPM01 \l 1033 ]

However, despite the advantages of MEA, there are some problem that is the limited

maximum CO2 loading in MEA[ CITATION BPM01 \l 1033 ]. According to the research done

before, maximum loading the MEA can absorb is 0.5 mol of CO 2 for every mol of MEA. This

value is much lower compared to CO 2 loading capacity of tertiary amine, Methyl

diethanolamine (MDEA) which is can absorb 1 mol of CO 2 for every mol of MDEA. In order

to increase maximum CO2 loading capacity of MEA, systems of mixed amine had been used.

One of example solvents for CO2 absorption of mixed amine is MEA and MDEA. This mixed
solvent will have a greater capacity to react with acid gas because it can be used in higher

concentrations.

Besides that the other disadvantages using amine as a solvent is the excessive energy

requirement for solvent regeneration which will lead to increase in operating cost [ CITATION

BPM01 \l 1033 ]. So, new research had been studied that using ionic liquid together with amine

in order to reduce the cost for regeneration of solvent, also mixture of ionic liquid can offers a

satisfactory CO2 capture capability.