Abstract
Post-combustion capture processes by using CO2 absorber are considered one of the options for Carbon Capture. Consequently, how to reduce CO2 capture cost is an important issue. Huge volume of the absorption equipment is the main cause of high CO2 capture cost. Traditional CO2 absorption equipment has drawback of huge volume, mainly because of the low gas-liquid mass transfer efficiency. That led to use volume of equipment to make up the problem of mass transfer efficiency. In recent years, there has been many studies of CO2 capture process toward improvement of absorber mass transfer efficiency. It is shown that the most important mass-transfer parameter is the interfacial area, hence, it has been deeply concerned. In the present study, we propose an approach by arranging several artificial models randomly to substitute the real random packing fields. To begin with, we use CFD simulation to evaluate packing structure, with a focus on parameters such as the interfacial areas and liquid holdups. Three dimensional numerical simulations of gas-liquid countercurrent flow in random packings are performed. Interfacial areas and liquid holdups are investigated using the volume of fluid method. Moreover, the VOF method is used to capture the gas–liquid interface motion. Results show that interfacial areas and liquid holdups increase with increasing liquid flow rates. In order to validate the accuracy of our model, the simulations results are compared to several correlations from literatures, and find that our simulation result is analogous to the ones in the literature, which indicates our model is reliable. As a result, this work shows how our method can be used as an effective tool to simulate and provide related information on random packing fields.