MEMBRANE CONTACTORS WITH POLYMER MEMBRANES FOR AMINE CO2 SOLVENT DEOXYGENATION

Abstract

Anthropogenic CO2 emissions into the atmosphere are one of the unsolved problems of the modern world. A significant contribution to the increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is made by the flue gases of the energy production industry. The most mature technology for post-combustion CO2 capture is absorption using amine solvents. The disadvantage of this technology is the oxidative degradation of amines due to the presence of dissolved oxygen in the solvent. A promising solution to control the cause of amine degradation is oxygen concentration maintenance. In this work, membrane contactors were developed for dissolved oxygen removal (deoxygenation) from model alkanolamine CO2 solvents. Composite and flat sheet membranes based on highly permeable glassy polymers poly[1-(trimethylsilyl)-1-propyne] and poly[vinyltrimethylsilane] were obtained. Gas-liquid and liquid-liquid membrane contactors based on the fabricated membranes were developed. A deoxygenation process was implemented using a vacuum to create a driving force in the case of a gas-liquid contactor, while a liquid-liquid membrane contactor was tested using aqueous solutions of oxygen scavengers. The various types of alkanolamines were used to test the deoxygenation process. It has been shown that 5-37% of dissolved oxygen can be removed from amine solution using the developed membrane contactors. The process efficiency was evaluated with a resistance-in-series model.