Carbon dioxide desorption behavior of potassium carbonate supported on gamma-alumina solid sorbent in wet fluidized bed under steam atmosphere

Abstract

Since the carbon dioxide (CO2) capture using solid sorbent is a reversible reaction, the solid sorbent can be regenerated by the desorption process. Therefore, the desorption process is one of the key important processes for the CO2 capture system. Traditionally, most of the literature studies focus on the desorption of solid sorbent under an N2 atmosphere. However, the desorption process of the solid sorbent is inappropriate in the real system because the system will need another process to separate CO2 and nitrogen (N2) after the desorption process. This study focused on the CO2 desorption of potassium carbonate supported on gamma-alumina (K2CO3/γ-Al2O3) in a wet fluidized bed under a steam atmosphere by using the multiphase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. The effects of water thickness and dry restitution coefficient on CO2 desorption rate were investigated to provide a realistic particle collision behavior and to explore their effects on CO2 desorption phenomena. Moreover, the effect of steam velocity on the hydrodynamic behaviors of fluidization which on CO2 desorption rate was studied. The simulated results demonstrated that all the parameters, water thickness, dry restitution coefficient, and steam velocity had significantly affected system hydrodynamics and CO2 desorption rate in the wet fluidization desorption process. Furthermore, the effect of desorption temperature on CO2 desorption rate was evaluated for finding the appropriate temperature for CO2 desorption process of K2CO3/γ-Al2O3. The results showed that the appropriate desorption temperature for CO2 desorption under steam atmosphere was the temperature over 150 °C.