Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.38, No.5, 2044-2050, 1999
Behavior of the mass-transfer coefficient of structured packings in CO2 absorbers with chemical reactions
The present study provides comprehensive experimental data on the performance of structured packings in CO2 absorption application. Over 90 runs of the absorption experiments were conducted in 3 different scale absorption units (laboratory-scale, pilot-scale, and industrial-scale units). The structured packings used in this study were Sulzer EX, Gempak 4A, and Sulzer EX. Aqueous solutions of sodium hydroxide (NaOH), monoethanolamine (MEA), and 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol (AMP) were employed as absorption solvents. The performance of the structured packings was evaluated in terms of the volumetric overall mass-transfer coefficient (K(G)a(v)) as functions of the process operating parameters including gas load, CO2 partial pressure, Liquid load, Liquid temperature, solvent concentration, solvent type, and structured packing type. To emphasize the superior performance of the structured packings, performance comparisons between the used structured packings and common random packings are also given.