ENG1281 - Development of new absorber technologies for CO2 capture and usage

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Damage to the environment due to burning fossil fuels is an established fact and technologies to remove CO2 from flue gases has been developed over the last three decades. Industry is now looking at ways to use this CO2 as a chemical feedstock. Techniques for capture include hot potassium carbonate solutions and amines. These systems require gas liquid contactors as the first unit operation. Conventional spray towers to make this contact are huge, intrusive and expensive and make the foot print of the CO2 capture unit large compared to the industrial site that emits the CO2. This makes the adoptability of carbon capture challenging. Against this backdrop an ambitious and adventurous research programme has been developed to assess the feasibility of increasing the efficiency and downsizing the gas-liquid contacting process by developing a new family of contactors. This includes modifying venturi ejectors to achieve large interfacial area per unit volume of gas. The research programme has been developed together with a leading ejector manufacturing company, Transvac, in Alfreton, Derbyshire. Innovations within the ejector technology as a process contactor will help to reduce the size and capital costs of CO2 capture plant and equipment to a point so they become desirable for end users. There is the possibility to extend this approach to numerous other processes worldwide. To develop a product suitable for carbon capture, both an in depth understanding of the competing phenomena that take place within high efficiency ejectors, and practical considerations of how to replace the contactors in the capture process will be required.This is an opportunity for a motivated, enthusiastic candidate to take an active role in developing process technology to convert an existing carbon-heavy processes to a low carbon future. Following a year of skills development at the University of Nottingham, which will develop research capabilities and give the student a broad awareness of the energy industry, they will devote their time to the investigation of these phenomena, using experiments and modelling capabilities at the University of Nottingham Multiphase Flow Laboratory and the high pressure flow facility at Transvac.