Abstract: The usage of capillary tubes for CO₂ absorption suffers from small residence time, which leads to reduced performance for large throughput. This work presents a method of connecting expansion units to capillary tubes to serve as a residence time delayer. The effect of the expansion unit on gas-liquid hydrodynamics, pressure drop and mass transfer coefficient (k_La) are investigated under various operating pressures up to 4.0 MPa, for both physical and chemical absorption. A novel periodic jetting flow is found in the expansion unit, which can intensify the CO₂ absorption. Experimental results show that the strategy can significantly decrease the pressure drop while maintaining the absorption performance to a large extent. The overall k_La for physical and chemical absorption are correlated to pressure drop, respectively. Besides, CO₂ loading in rich absorbents increases dramatically compared to literature studies with only micromixers or capillary tubes, which is beneficial to regenerate solvent. The study verifies the concept that pre-treatment with water can largely reduce the usage of amines, and can also provide a guide for process design in natural gas purification such as biogas recovery.

Key words: Microchannel, Microreactor, Separation, Purification, High pressure