Device Scale Modeling of Solvent Absorption using MFIX-TFM
- National Energy Technology Lab. (NETL), Albany, OR (United States)
- National Energy Technology Lab. (NETL), Albany, OR (United States); Oak Ridge Inst. for Science and Education (ORISE), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Recent climate change is largely attributed to greenhouse gases (e.g., carbon dioxide, methane) and fossil fuels account for a large majority of global CO2 emissions. That said, fossil fuels will continue to play a significant role in the generation of power for the foreseeable future. The extent to which CO2 is emitted needs to be reduced, however, carbon capture and sequestration are also necessary actions to tackle climate change. Different approaches exist for CO2 capture including both post-combustion and pre-combustion technologies, oxy-fuel combustion and/or chemical looping combustion. The focus of this effort is on post-combustion solvent-absorption technology. To apply CO2 technologies at commercial scale, the availability and maturity and the potential for scalability of that technology need to be considered. Solvent absorption is a proven technology but not at the scale needed by typical power plant. The scale up and down and design of laboratory and commercial packed bed reactors depends heavily on the specific knowledge of two-phase pressure drop, liquid holdup, the wetting efficiency and mass transfer efficiency as a function of operating conditions. Simple scaling rules often fail to provide proper design. Conventional reactor design modeling approaches will generally characterize complex non-ideal flow and mixing patterns using simplified and/or mechanistic flow assumptions. While there are varying levels of complexity used within these approaches, none of these models resolve the local velocity fields. Consequently, they are unable to account for important design factors such as flow maldistribution and channeling from a fundamental perspective. Ideally design would be aided by development of predictive models based on truer representation of the physical and chemical processes that occur at different scales. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) models are based on multidimensional flow equations with first principle foundations. CFD models can include a more accurate physical description of flow processes and be modified to include more complex behavior. Wetting performance and spatial liquid distribution inside the absorber are recognized as weak areas of knowledge requiring further investigation. CFD tools offer a possible method to investigating such topics and gaining a better understanding of their influence on reactor performance. This report focuses first on describing a hydrodynamic model for countercurrent gas-liquid flow through a packed column and then on the chemistry, heat and mass transfer specific to CO2 absorption using monoethanolamine (MEA). The indicated model is implemented in MFIX, a CFD open source software package. The user defined functions needed to build this model are described in detail along with the keywords for the corresponding input file. A test case is outlined along with a few results. The example serves to briefly illustrate the developed CFD tool and its potential capability to investigate solvent absorption.
- Research Organization:
- National Energy Technology Lab. (NETL), Albany, OR (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- Contributing Organization:
- Multiphase Flow Science Team
- OSTI ID:
- 1350958
- Report Number(s):
- NETL-PUB-20902
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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