Carbon dioxide absorption contactors: Hollow fibre membranes and packed absorption columns

One of the important aspects in an absorption system is the effectiveness in which the gas and liquid phases come into contact with each other. An effective absorption process will provide sufficient contacting area for the gas and liquid phases to interact upon. With this in mind, work was conducted to evaluate carbon dioxide (CO2) absorption into aqueous solutions of monoethanolamine (MEA) using two different types of contacting devices: gas absorption membrane (GAM) modules and traditional packed columns. The performance of these two absorption devices was compared to one another using the overall mass transfer coefficient (K(G)a(v)) as a basis. The GAM module contained microporous polypropylene hollow fibre membranes and the packed absorption column contained Sulzer DX structured packing. The results indicate that GAM modules tend to have slightly larger K(G)a(v) values, potentially opening the door for smaller absorption contactors.