(46e) Absorption Evaluation Sulfur Dioxide in Water Using Structured Packing

In order to determine the height of a separation column, hydrodynamic and mass transfer models are necessary to evaluate the pressure drop and the height of the global mass transfer unit. Departing from experimental values, such adjusted models have shown a high level of accuracy in its results, thus confirming the validity of different systems and packings. The present work evaluates the absorption SO2 using water based process. The absorption column uses three kinds of mesh corrugated structured packing, one developed in the Mexican National Institute of Nuclear Research (ININ, for its acronym in Spanish) and other similar packings, named Sulzer BX and Mellapak. The optimization was done applying a Two Film model which is based on the number of global mass transfer units, involving the separation efficiency as a function of the height of a global transfer unit. A comparison of the height of mass transfer unit on gas film and liquid film was done with respect to the equilibrium line slope, using an absorption system and the three packings considered. The pressure drop, mass transfer coeficients and heigth of mass transfer results show a high influence of the estimated value on the separation efficiency from the slope equilibrium line. The average deviation of the estimated values from the experimental data is 21%. The Sulzer BX packing showed higher separation efficiency than the ININ and Mellapak packing.The obtained results allow the modification of several parameters of the structured packing, in order to achieve a tailor-made geometric specification for a very specific separation-process application.

Keywords: structured packing; absorption; sulfur dioxide; equilibrium line