Process Raman Analyzers for Amine Gas Monitoring

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions at scale requires capturing CO2 from large, stationary sources. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) separates CO2 from industrial and power-generation flue gases and either stores it permanently or reuses it in processes such as enhancing oil recovery, promoting the growth of plants and algae, and serving as a raw material in the manufacturing of fuels, chemicals, or building materials.

Post Combustion Capture (PCC) systems offer both technical and economic feasibility as effective solutions to mitigate emissions. Capturing CO2 post-combustion involves extracting it from the flue gases generated by burning the primary fuel in the air. This provides a key advantage as it can be easily adapted and retrofitted to existing plants.

The main difficulty of PCC is represented by the need to produce a highly concentrated CO2 stream matching the purity requirement for transportation and storage from the flue gas stream, where CO2 is diluted to between 4% to 15%.  Amine-based absorption represents the most mature choice for PCC and is actively employed for the separation of CO2 in industrial processes. Amine-based absorption is the most established PCC method, but it brings operational hurdles: high regeneration energy (steam duty), corrosion risk, solvent losses by evaporation, and chemical degradation in the presence of oxygen. This is precisely the gap that inline Raman analysis fills, delivering continuous insight into process chemistry to help operators minimize steam consumption, detect solvent degradation early, and reduce corrosion risk.