Numerical study on CO2 absorption efficiency by using aqueous monoethanolamine solution in CO2 absorber column

Abstract

Paper presented at the 8th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Mauritius, 11-13 July, 2011.

In this study, the one-dimensional rate based model is developed for predicting the performance of the CO2 absorber column using aqueous monoethanolamine (MEA) solution. To determine the concentration of each species and temperature distribution along the column height, mass and heat balance equations of vapor and liquid phase are coupled with chemical reactions in MEA-CO2-H2O system. The two-film model is applied to estimate the mass transfer in the vapour and liquid film. To calculate the enhancement factor, three types of reaction rate coefficient of the CO2/aqueous MEA reaction are considered. The mathematical and reaction kinetics models used in this study are validated in the comparison of simulation results with experimental data given in the literature. The simulation results are in good agreement with the data in the literature. In addition, three types of reaction rate coefficient suggested by Hikita et al., Versteeg et al. and Aboudheir et al. are considered. The performance of CO2 absorber column with respect to the reaction rate coefficients is compared with experimental data.