Using expansion units to improve CO2 absorption for natural gas purification-A study on the hydrodynamics and mass transfer

doi:10.1016/j.cjche.2020.08.025

中国化学工程学报 ›› 2021, Vol. 29 ›› Issue (1): 35-46.DOI: 10.1016/j.cjche.2020.08.025

• Fluid Dynamics and Transport Phenomena • 上一篇下一篇

Using expansion units to improve CO₂ absorption for natural gas purification-A study on the hydrodynamics and mass transfer

Kai Zhu^1,2, Chaoqun Yao¹, Yanyan Liu^1,2, Guangwen Chen¹

1 Dalian National Laboratory for Clean Energy, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, China;
2 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

收稿日期:2020-06-01 修回日期:2020-07-06 出版日期:2021-01-28 发布日期:2021-04-02
通讯作者: Chaoqun Yao, Guangwen Chen
基金资助:
We acknowledge gratefully the financial supports for this project from National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.21676263, U1608221), the CAS supports of the Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (No. 2017229), DICP (DICP I201925).

Using expansion units to improve CO₂ absorption for natural gas purification-A study on the hydrodynamics and mass transfer

Kai Zhu^1,2, Chaoqun Yao¹, Yanyan Liu^1,2, Guangwen Chen¹

1 Dalian National Laboratory for Clean Energy, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, China;
2 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

Received:2020-06-01 Revised:2020-07-06 Online:2021-01-28 Published:2021-04-02
Contact: Chaoqun Yao, Guangwen Chen
Supported by:
We acknowledge gratefully the financial supports for this project from National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.21676263, U1608221), the CAS supports of the Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (No. 2017229), DICP (DICP I201925).

摘要/Abstract

摘要： 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.

关键词: Microchannel, Microreactor, Separation, Purification, High pressure

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

Kai Zhu, Chaoqun Yao, Yanyan Liu, Guangwen Chen. Using expansion units to improve CO₂ absorption for natural gas purification-A study on the hydrodynamics and mass transfer[J]. 中国化学工程学报, 2021, 29(1): 35-46.

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Using expansion units to improve CO₂ absorption for natural gas purification-A study on the hydrodynamics and mass transfer

Using expansion units to improve CO₂ absorption for natural gas purification-A study on the hydrodynamics and mass transfer

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