Numerical analysis on CO2 capture process of temperature swing adsorption (TSA): Optimization of reactor geometry

Abstract

Numerical study on CO2 adsorption process could benefit an in-depth understanding on the mechanism of physical phenomena and corresponding engineering design for industrial development of carbon capture. The reactor geometry is critical to the energy-efficient design of CO2 adsorption capture, considering reactor is the most energy-intensive component in the whole system. Using delicate-designed source term in numerical model, the optimized geometry parameters of reactor could be obtained with an accepted calculation cost. In this paper, the design method on the source terms involved in the simulation process is screened firstly, and the numerical calculation is conducted with case study on Mg-MOF-74. The model took into account the constraints of surface area, the inlet flowrate and the adsorbent quality of reactors. Especially, under the constant surface area, three cases with different combinations of length and diameter are studied, respectively. Furthermore, three cases are revisited and compared under the conditions of the same and different cycle time for a fair performance assessment. The case with a length–diameter ratio of 11.2 performs the best adsorption effect which demonstrated that the optimal geometry parameters of TSA capture could be defined through proposed modeling method and related source terms in this study.