Post-combustion CO₂ capture based on alkanolamine solvents is currently the most developed and ready-to-use technology to reduce CO₂ emission into the atmosphere. The CO₂ gas captured by this method usually displays a moderate level of moisture, which requires dehydration through the use of glycol solvents. However, due to exposure to impurities in the flue gas stream and high temperatures, these solvents can experience chemical and thermal degradation. The build-up of degradation products can lead to plant operational problems and increase consumption of utilities such as gas and electricity.

A new reclaiming process was therefore developed to separate degradation products and other types of impurities from these solvents. A detailed analysis of the feed stream, the recovered product stream, and the waste stream showed that this novel reclamation technology is capable of removing most of the undesirable impurities and degradation products and restoring the solvent to almost its original purity at a high recovery rate with minimal energy consumption. The data generated by this study will be useful for scaling-up and designing commercial reclaimers that can meet the solvents’ cleanup targets with low expenditure, low energy consumption, and minimal waste for disposal.

基于链烷醇胺溶剂的燃烧后CO ₂捕集是目前最先进且易于使用的技术，可减少向大气中的CO ₂排放。通过这种方法捕获的CO ₂气体通常显示适度的水分，这需要通过使用乙二醇溶剂进行脱水。但是，由于暴露在烟气流中的杂质和高温下，这些溶剂会经历化学降解和热降解。降解产物的积累会导致工厂运行问题，并增加公用事业（如天然气和电力）的消耗。

因此，开发了一种新的回收方法以从这些溶剂中分离出降解产物和其他类型的杂质。对进料流，回收的产物流和废物流的详细分析表明，这种新颖的回收技术能够以较高的回收率去除大部分不良杂质和降解产物，并能将溶剂恢复到几乎原始的纯度。能耗最小。这项研究产生的数据将有助于扩大规模和设计商业回收器，这些回收器可以以低支出，低能耗和最少的废品处理来满足溶剂的清理目标。