The most common technology for postcombustion of CO2 capture is the amine solvent scrubber. The energy consumption for capturing CO2 from flue gases using amine solvent technology is 15-30% of the power plant electricity production. Hence, there is a need to develop more efficient methods of removing CO2. A circulating fluidized bed using sodium or potassium carbonates is potentially such a process, as their high decomposition pressures allow regeneration at low temperatures using waste heat rather than steam from the power plant. But equilibrium data for the sorbents require the use of several cooled stages to achieve high CO2 conversions. Here, a method of computing such a number of stages for a given CO2 conversion was developed using multiphase computational fluid dynamics. It was found that it required six equilibrium stages to remove 96% of CO2 with the initial mole fraction of 0.15 in a sorption riser. (C) 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers