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Reactive absorption with an aqueous solution of amines in an absorber/stripper loop is the most mature technology for postcombustion CO₂ capture (PCC). However, most of the commercial-scale CO₂ capture plant designs that have been reported in the open literature are based on values of CO₂ loadings and/or solvent circulation rates without an openly available techno-economic consideration. As a consequence, most of the reported designs may be suboptimal, and some of them appear to be unrealistic from practical and operational viewpoints. In this paper, four monoethanolamine (MEA) based CO₂ capture plants have been optimally designed for both gas-fired and coal-fired power plants based on process and economic analyses. We have found that the optimum lean CO₂ loading for MEA-based CO₂ capture plants that can service commercial-scale power plants, whether natural-gas-fired or coal-fired, is …