Influence of design and operating parameters for additively manufactured intensified packing devices on CO2-Absorption column cooling and capture efficiency

Dhruba J. Deka; Gyoung G. Jang; Joshua A. Thompson; Amiee Jackson; Costas Tsouris

doi:10.1016/j.cej.2022.141236

Influence of design and operating parameters for additively manufactured intensified packing devices on CO₂-Absorption column cooling and capture efficiency

Dhruba J. Deka, Gyoung G. Jang, Joshua A. Thompson, Amiee Jackson, Costas Tsouris

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Solvent-based CO₂ absorption is technologically a matured CO₂ capture pathway but suffers from: high regeneration energy demand, and solvent temperature rise and decreased capture efficiency caused by the heat of reaction. While research has focused on developing non-aqueous and low-aqueous solvents for decreasing the regeneration energy, the temperature bulge due to exothermic absorption is typically dealt with by cooling the solvent with an external inter-stage heat-exchanger. This approach may increase the overall process footprint, as well as capital and operating costs. The current study explores a process intensification approach by incorporating inside the column an additively manufactured intensified packing device that consists of corrugated plates and internal coolant channels. The corrugated plates provide surface area for mass transfer between gas and liquid, while cooling fluid inside the internal channels removes heat from the exothermic reactive system. Two different intensified devices with specific surface areas of 266 m²/m³ and 359 m²/m³ were designed, manufactured, and tested inside a 2.06-m long and 0.203-m diameter column packed with commercial Mellapak 250Y packing. The device with a lower surface area showed up to 27 % reduction in cooling performance. A steady-state heat transfer model provides good agreement with the experimental column temperature and intra-stage heat removal data. Although a decrease in heat transfer performance was observed for the device with lower surface area, CO₂ capture experiments performed with simulated flue gas and low-aqueous solvent demonstrated that both intensified devices lead to a similar improvement of 12 % in capture efficiency. This study provides an understanding on simplifying the intensified packing device geometry and decreasing the device fabrication cost by 25 % without compromising with the CO₂ absorption performance of the packed column.

Original language	English
Article number	141236
Journal	Chemical Engineering Journal
Volume	457
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2022.141236
State	Published - Feb 1 2023

Funding

This research was funded by the Advanced Manufacturing Office and the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 . The authors are thankful to Paul Mobley, Jak Tanthana, Vijay Gupta and Tianyu Chen of RTI International for providing solvent and useful insights during the course of the work, Charles Finney of ORNL for project discussions and Scott Palko and Jonathan Willocks of ORNL for designing and setting up the experimental system. This research was funded by the Advanced Manufacturing Office and the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. The authors are thankful to Paul Mobley, Jak Tanthana, Vijay Gupta and Tianyu Chen of RTI International for providing solvent and useful insights during the course of the work, Charles Finney of ORNL for project discussions and Scott Palko and Jonathan Willocks of ORNL for designing and setting up the experimental system. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).

Funders	Funder number
U.S. Department of Energy	DE-AC05-00OR22725
Advanced Manufacturing Office
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management

Keywords

Additive manufacturing
CO capture
Heat transfer
Low-aqueous solvent
Process intensification

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1016/j.cej.2022.141236

Cite this

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title = "Influence of design and operating parameters for additively manufactured intensified packing devices on CO2-Absorption column cooling and capture efficiency",

abstract = "Solvent-based CO2 absorption is technologically a matured CO2 capture pathway but suffers from: high regeneration energy demand, and solvent temperature rise and decreased capture efficiency caused by the heat of reaction. While research has focused on developing non-aqueous and low-aqueous solvents for decreasing the regeneration energy, the temperature bulge due to exothermic absorption is typically dealt with by cooling the solvent with an external inter-stage heat-exchanger. This approach may increase the overall process footprint, as well as capital and operating costs. The current study explores a process intensification approach by incorporating inside the column an additively manufactured intensified packing device that consists of corrugated plates and internal coolant channels. The corrugated plates provide surface area for mass transfer between gas and liquid, while cooling fluid inside the internal channels removes heat from the exothermic reactive system. Two different intensified devices with specific surface areas of 266 m2/m3 and 359 m2/m3 were designed, manufactured, and tested inside a 2.06-m long and 0.203-m diameter column packed with commercial Mellapak 250Y packing. The device with a lower surface area showed up to 27 % reduction in cooling performance. A steady-state heat transfer model provides good agreement with the experimental column temperature and intra-stage heat removal data. Although a decrease in heat transfer performance was observed for the device with lower surface area, CO2 capture experiments performed with simulated flue gas and low-aqueous solvent demonstrated that both intensified devices lead to a similar improvement of 12 % in capture efficiency. This study provides an understanding on simplifying the intensified packing device geometry and decreasing the device fabrication cost by 25 % without compromising with the CO2 absorption performance of the packed column.",

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AU - Jackson, Amiee

AU - Tsouris, Costas

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AB - Solvent-based CO2 absorption is technologically a matured CO2 capture pathway but suffers from: high regeneration energy demand, and solvent temperature rise and decreased capture efficiency caused by the heat of reaction. While research has focused on developing non-aqueous and low-aqueous solvents for decreasing the regeneration energy, the temperature bulge due to exothermic absorption is typically dealt with by cooling the solvent with an external inter-stage heat-exchanger. This approach may increase the overall process footprint, as well as capital and operating costs. The current study explores a process intensification approach by incorporating inside the column an additively manufactured intensified packing device that consists of corrugated plates and internal coolant channels. The corrugated plates provide surface area for mass transfer between gas and liquid, while cooling fluid inside the internal channels removes heat from the exothermic reactive system. Two different intensified devices with specific surface areas of 266 m2/m3 and 359 m2/m3 were designed, manufactured, and tested inside a 2.06-m long and 0.203-m diameter column packed with commercial Mellapak 250Y packing. The device with a lower surface area showed up to 27 % reduction in cooling performance. A steady-state heat transfer model provides good agreement with the experimental column temperature and intra-stage heat removal data. Although a decrease in heat transfer performance was observed for the device with lower surface area, CO2 capture experiments performed with simulated flue gas and low-aqueous solvent demonstrated that both intensified devices lead to a similar improvement of 12 % in capture efficiency. This study provides an understanding on simplifying the intensified packing device geometry and decreasing the device fabrication cost by 25 % without compromising with the CO2 absorption performance of the packed column.

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