Modeling and simulation of the start-up process of coal fired power plants with post-combustion CO2 capture

•A model of a coal fired power plant coupled to a post-combustion capture plant to study the start-up process is presented.•A sequence control is combined with suitable control structures to achieve an automatic start-up of the process.•The start-up results show that the total start-up time of the capture plant is 2.54 h for a hot-start.