Enhanced CO2 removal in hollow fiber membrane contactors using amine-based nanofluids

Abstract

Increasing the mass transfer coefficient, improving the rheological properties of the liquid, reducing the possibility of wetting, and reducing the consumption of the absorbent are among the significant effects of using nanofluids in membrane contactors as chemical absorbents. The use of nanofluids allows the system to use higher transmembrane pressures and higher liquid flow rates. In this work, stable amine-based nanofluid were prepared by adding different amounts (0–0.4 wt%) of three nanoparticles (Al2O3, Fe3O4, and MWCNT-COOH) to MEA aqueous solution. Amine-based nanofluids were then used in a membrane contactor to remove CO2 from the gas mixtures. The influence of effective parameters on the separation performance was evaluated in order to better understand how NPs affect CO2 removal. The findings of this work show that the use of nanofluids can improve CO2 removal performance by 5% and thus reduce adsorbent consumption by 20%. The effect of nanoparticle dispersion on mass transfer flux was evaluated using a new enhancement factor (Rnano). Numerical methods were used to provide a suitable equation for Rnano so that it can be combined with general mass transfer equations. The Rnano values obtained for the NPs used in this work were in the range of 0.03–0.05.