화학공학소재연구정보센터
Fuel Processing Technology, Vol.173, 103-111, 2018
Experimental study of the adsorber performance in a multi-stage fluidized bed system for continuous CO2 capture by means of temperature swing adsorption
Most recently, a new reactor design of a continuous temperature swing adsorption (TSA) CO2 capture process has been proposed by the authors of this work. The reactor design incorporates interconnected multi-stage fluidized bed columns that act as adsorber and desorber in the TSA process. In the course of this work, a comprehensive parameter variation was performed in the TSA bench scale unit, to study the adsorber performance. Results show that by decreasing the operating temperatures in the adsorber to 42 degrees C, the dynamic CO2 loading of the adsorbent could be increased to 7.4 wt%. The flexibility of the process was investigated in respect to different CO2 concentrations of the treated flue-gas as well as different adsorber feed-gas velocities. Increasing the CO2 concentrations of the adsorber feed-gas leads to an increase of the CO2 capture rate and dynamic CO2 loading of the adsorbent. At the maximum CO2 concentration of 12 vol%CO2, the capture rate reached its maximum of 64 kg(CO2).day(-1). Furthermore, the flue-gas feeding rate could be increased to 0.87 m.s(-1) which successfully demonstrated a turndown ratio of 2.7. However, large gas bubbles observed at adsorber feed-gas velocities exceeding 0.69 m.s(-1) make insufficient gas-solids contact likely, which in turn explains a reduction of the dynamic CO2 loading of the adsorbent at these conditions. For high CO2 feeding rates, the capture efficiency dropped because of an insufficient heat transfer surface area and a limitation in the achievable sorbent circulation rates. In conclusion, the parameter study revealed a high operating flexibility of the TSA CO2 capture process and delivered a valuable basis for further improvements of the TSA reactor design.