In the context of CO2 emissions reduction from power plants, CO2 removal from flue gas by chemical absorption with monoethanolamine is analyzed in detail. By applying process integration and multiobjective optimization techniques the influence of the operating conditions on the thermo- economic performance and on the optimal thermal integration within a power plant is studied. With the aim of performing optimization of complex integrated energy systems, simpler parameterized models of the CO2 capture process are developed. These models predict the optimized thermo- economic performances with regard to the capture rate, flue gas flowrate and CO2 concentration. When applied to overall process optimization, the optimization time is considerably reduced without penalizing the overall power plant model quality. This approach is promising for the preliminary design and evaluation of process options including a CO2 capture unit. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.