Development of new absorber technologies for carbon capture and usage

由于燃烧化石燃料对环境的破坏是一个既定的事实，并且在过去三十年中已经开发了清扫技术。这些包括热的碳酸钾溶液，胺和其他吸收剂。几乎所有的系统都需要气液接触器作为第一单元操作。考虑到烟气体积流速，这些系统中的吸收塔是最主要的结构，导致塔直径高达10 m。这使得碳捕获单元的足迹与排放CO2的工业场所相比很大。资本投资和运营成本相当大，使得碳捕获的经济可行性和适应性对许多行业具有挑战性。 在这种背景下，一个雄心勃勃的和冒险的研究计划已经开发，以评估通过开发一个新的家庭的接触器缩小气液接触过程的可行性。这包括修改文氏管喷射器，以实现每单位体积气体的大界面面积。该研究计划是与阿尔弗雷顿的领先喷射器制造公司Transvac共同开发的。将其喷射器技术用作工艺接触器将在一定程度上减小CCU装置和设备的尺寸和资本成本，因此它们成为最终用户的理想选择。为了开发适用于碳捕获的产品，深入了解高效喷射器内发生的竞争现象，以及如何使用喷射器取代CCU工艺中的接触器，以降低CCU工厂的成本，效率和规模。该研究计划主要侧重于评估所建议技术的性能。这包括开展大量实验活动，收集数据并进行分析，以开发经验模型。参与该项目的团队在开发喷射器技术、两相流实验和数据分析方面具有丰富的经验，并将参与该项目的每个阶段。

The damage to the environment due to burning fossil fuels is an established fact, and the development of mopping up technologies have been developed over the last three decades. These include hot potassium carbonate solutions, Amines and other absorbents. Almost all systems require gas-liquid contactors as the first unit operation. Considering the flue gas volumetric flowrates, the absorber towers in these systems are the most dominating structures leading to columns up to 10 m diameters. This makes the footprint of the carbon capture unit large compared to the industrial site that emits the CO2. Capital investment and operational costs are considerably large, making the economic feasibility and adaptability of carbon capture challenging to many industries. In this backdrop, an ambitious and adventurous research programme has been developed to assess the feasibility of downsizing the gas-liquid contact process by developing a new family of contactors. This includes modifying venture 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. The use of their ejector technology as a process contactor will reduce the size and capital costs of CCU plant and equipment to a point, so they become desirable for end-users. To develop a product suitable for carbon capture, an in-depth understanding of both the competing phenomena that take place within efficiency ejectors, and how using ejectors to replace the contactors in the CCU process can reduce the cost, efficiency, and size of the CCU plant. The research programme is mainly focused on evaluating the performance of the suggested technology. This includes a considerable experimental campaign collecting data and analysing them to develop empirical models. The team working on this project has considerable experience in developing ejector technology, two-phase flow experimentation and data analysis and will be involved at every stage of the programme.