Simulation study of carbon dioxide capture in a novel rotating liquid sheet contactor

Abstract

The principal objective of this research was to perform a computational fluid dynamics simulation of CO2 capture from a gas stream through aqueous potassium glycinate (K-Gly) and potassium glutaminate (K-Glu) solutions in a rotating liquid sheet (RLS) contactor with inner as well as outer diameters with the size 14 and 18 mm. The obtained model has been solved using COMSOL software. The effects of inlet CO2 concentration, rotational speed, gas flow rate, and solvent concentration on CO2 removal efficiency and removal flux have been investigated. The obtained RLS could have a large interfacial contact area with the gas; they could be designed in such a way that the rotation of the liquid sheet could pump the gas through the empty column at rates equivalent to those observed in the considered packed bed contactors. The device’s centrifugal operation substantially reduced droplet entrainment, and the liquid surface generation control also made the device suitable for solvents that were too viscous to be applied in a packed bed or other similar traditional contactors. The results show that using the K-Gly could increase separation efficiency to more than 95 %. It indicates that increasing the rate of the obtained gas flow from 420 to 700 L/h increases CO2 capture. The model’s validity was further confirmed by the fact that the CO2 predicted mole percentage in the exit gas was within 5.13 % of the experimental values.