Effects of stripper configurations on mass transfer and energy consumption of regeneration process

Abstract

Abstract The high energy consumption of the regeneration is the main barrier of the CO2 capture system application. The stripper is the primary device for the regeneration process, which involves with the transport process and reactions. It is beneficial for the energy saving to clarify the impacts of the stripper configurations on the heat and mass transfer performance in the stripper. Based on the representative elementary volume method and pseudo-single-liquid model, a novel computational model of heat and mass transfer was developed, in which the H2O transfer process was also taken into account. The simulation results were compared with the experimental data. The effects of the stripper configurations on the heat and mass transfer performance were investigated, and the energy consumption analysis of different strippers under two representative working conditions was carried out. The results show that the height of stripper is dominant in the heat and mass transfer performance, rather than diameter. When the desorbing rate of CO2 is above 50%, the desorbing rate of CO2 increases with the stripper height rising and the specific energy consumption of regeneration process only increases a little.