Absorption and desorption of carbon dioxide in several water types

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of water type on the rate of CO2 transfer from/to an aqueous phase with varying degree of water salinity. The absorption and desorption experiments were conducted on reverse osmosis product, brackish well, and brackish water reverse osmosis reject waters as well as seawater in a mechanically agitated tank. Results show that the direction of mass transfer has a major impact on the value of the volumetric mass transfer coefficient, kLa, with the absorption experiments always rendering higher values. Furthermore, kLa values always decreased with salinity in both absorption and desorption experiments until a certain critical salinity value was reached, beyond which mass transfer increased again. However, kLa values were found to decrease continuously with an increase in the water alkalinity in absorption experiments, while no clear conclusion could be drawn for the alkalinity effect in the case of desorption experiments. These observations suggest that the effect of alkalinity should be further investigated to elucidate its impact along with the salinity on the volumetric mass transfer rate.