Development of new absorber technologies for carbon capture and usage

燃烧化石燃料对环境造成的破坏是一个既定的事实，在过去的三十年里，清理技术得到了发展。这些包括热碳酸钾溶液，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。考虑到烟气体积流量，这些系统中的吸收塔是最主要的结构，导致塔的直径达到10米。与排放二氧化碳的工业场所相比，这使得碳捕获装置的足迹更大。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都具有挑战性。在此背景下，一项雄心勃勃且具有冒险精神的研究计划已经被开发出来，通过开发一种新的接触器来评估缩小气液接触过程的可行性。这包括修改风险喷射器，以实现每单位体积气体的大界面面积。该研究项目是与位于阿尔弗顿的一家领先的喷射器制造公司Transvac共同开发的。使用他们的喷射器技术作为过程接触器，将CCU工厂和设备的规模和资本成本降低到一定程度，因此它们成为最终用户的理想选择。为了开发一种适合碳捕集的产品，深入了解在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过程中的接触器可以降低CCU工厂的成本，效率和规模。研究计划主要集中于评价所建议技术的性能。这包括一个相当大的实验活动，收集数据并对其进行分析，以开发经验模型。从事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.