Performance comparison of pressure swing adsorption and amine‐based absorption for synthesis gas purification

Abstract This research focuses on the simulation, evaluation and comparison of the separation performance of the pressure swing adsorption (PSA) and amine‐based absorption (ABS) processes in synthesis gas (syngas)/carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) separation. The main objective of this work is to produce a syngas stream with purity and composition suitable for feeding a Fischer–Tropsch reactor for synthetic fuel production. Simulations were conducted using Aspen Plus® v10 and Aspen Adsorption® v10 software. Evaluation involves multi‐criteria assessment (GREENSCOPE) within the Brazilian context. This assessment considers four scores: efficiency (syngas purity), energy (energy intensity), environment (global warming potential), and economics (minimum selling price of synthesis gas). The PSA process achieves 83.91% syngas purity, 0.30 MJ/kg syngas energy intensity, 0.004 kg CO 2‐eq /kg syngas global warming potential, and 0.06 US$/kg syngas minimum selling price. Conversely, the ABS process achieves 97.21% syngas purity, 15.31 MJ/kg syngas energy intensity, 0.487 kg CO 2‐eq/ kg syngas global warming potential, and 0.33 US$/kg syngas minimum selling price. The PSA process shows superior performance across all scores, except for efficiency, which shows similar scores for both processes.