TY - JOUR
TI - A numerical evaluation of prediction accuracy of CO2 absorber model for various reaction rate coefficients
AU - Shim Sung-Min
AU - Lee Sang-Jin
AU - Kim Woo-Seung
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2012
VL - 16
IS - 3
SP - 877
EP - 888
PT - Article
AB - The performance of the CO2 absorber column using mono-ethanolamine (MEA)  solution as chemical solvent are predicted by a One-Dimensional (1-D) rate  based model in the present study. 1-D Mass and heat balance equations of  vapor and liquid phase are coupled with interfacial mass transfer model and  vapor-liquid equilibrium model. The two-film theory is used to estimate the  mass transfer between the vapor and liquid film. Chemical reactions in  MEA-CO2-H2O system are considered to predict the equilibrium pressure of CO2  in the MEA solution. The mathematical and reaction kinetics models used in  this work are calculated by using in-house code. The numerical results are  validated in the comparison of simulation results with experimental and  simulation data given in the literature. The performance of CO2 absorber  column is evaluated by the 1-D rate based model using various reaction rate  coefficients suggested by various researchers. When the rate of liquid to gas  mass flow rate is about 8.3, 6.6, 4.5 and 3.1, the error of CO2 loading and  the CO2 removal efficiency using the reaction rate coefficients of Aboudheir  et al. is within about 4.9 % and 5.2 %, respectively. Therefore, the reaction  rate coefficient suggested by Aboudheir et al. among the various reaction  rate coefficients used in this study is appropriate to predict the  performance of CO2 absorber column using MEA solution. [Acknowledgement. This  research was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the  National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), funded by the Ministry of  Education, Science and Technology (2011-0017220)].