Opportunities and challenges in the development of monoethanolamine and its blends for post-combustion CO2 capture

Post-combustion Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) capture (PCC) via amine absorption-stripping is an evolving technology towards mitigation of CO 2 emissions. One of the major challenges in the technology development is the suitability of the solvent. Under the process operating conditions, irreversible reactions occur, thereby degrading the amine. The consequences of amine degradation are inevitable. The degradation products are harmful to the environment, increase the corrosion in the process equipment, cause fouling and ultimately make the process inefficient, hazardous and expensive. Monoethanolamine (MEA) is the benchmark solvent used and tested at industrial level for CO 2 capture because of its high absorption rate and capacity to capture CO 2 as well as medium to high resistance against oxidative and thermal degradation. This review reports degradation of MEA under process operating conditions, which includes up-to-dated list of degradation products, degradation kinetics and degradation pathways. Furthermore, degradation inhibition, computational studies, corrosivity as well as environmental concerns regarding the emissions of amine degradation products are critically reviewed. The objective of study is to provide researchers with a comprehensive knowledge on degradation of MEA, ways to reduce degradation, corrosion inhibition and understanding of environmental concerns for development of models for better understanding of behaviour of MEA and knowledge gaps.