RESUMEN
Carbon capture and storage is one of the potential options for reducing CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants while preserving their operation. Mathematical modeling was carried out for a one-stage membrane process of carbon dioxide capture from the flue gases of coal-fired power plants using commercial gas separation membranes. Our calculations show that highly CO2-permeable membranes provide similar characteristics with respect to the separation process (e.g., a specific area of membrane and a specific level of electrical energy consumption) despite the significant variation in CO2/N2 and H2O/CO2 selectivity. Regarding the development of processes for the recovery of CO2 from flue gas using membrane technology, ensuring high CO2 permeance of a membrane is more important than ensuring high CO2/N2 selectivity. The presence of water vapor in flue gas provides a higher driving force of CO2 transfer through the membrane due to the dilution of CO2 in the permeate. A cross-flow membrane module operation provides better recovery of CO2 in the presence of water vapor than a counter-current operation.
RESUMEN
A significant proportion of natural gas (NG) is produced in cold climates, where conditions are relevant to the formation of gas hydrates in raw gas stream. Methanol is often used as an effective inhibitor of hydrate formation. Further conditioning of NG includes dehydration, and the most common process of water vapor removal from NG is absorption. Absorption also provides removal of methanol vapors, which allows it reuse. The membrane method of natural gas dehydration is considered as a promising alternative; however, the study of methanol recovery by the membrane method, simultaneously to the dehydration of NG, has not been carried out previously. In addition, data on methanol vapor transfer in gas separation polymer membranes are almost absent in the literature. This paper evaluates the permeability coefficients of methanol vapors for several polymer materials, which are applied to the production of industrial membranes (PPO, PSf, CA). Mathematical modeling of the membrane process of NG dehydration with simultaneous recovery of methanol was performed. The dependencies of membrane area, methanol recovery and energy consumption for methane recycling and recompression on the process parameters are calculated. Obtained data show that the recovery of methanol during membrane dehydration of NG varies in the range 57-95%. The lowest values of membrane area and specific energy consumption were found for PPO based membrane.
RESUMEN
Designing hollow fiber (HF) membrane modules occupies one of the key positions in the development of efficient membrane processes for various purposes. In developing HF membrane modules, it is very important to have a uniform HF distribution and flow mixing in the shell side to significantly improve mass transfer and efficiency. This work suggests the application of different textile 3D HF structures (braided hoses and woven tape fabrics). The 3D structures consist of melt-spun, dense HFs based on poly(4-methyl-1-pentene) (PMP). Since the textile processing of HFs can damage the wall of the fiber or close the fiber bore, the membrane properties of the obtained structures are tested with a CO2/CH4 mixture in the temperature range of 0 to 40 °C. It is shown that HFs within the textile structure keep the same transport and separation characteristics compared to initial HFs. The mechanical properties of the PMP-based HFs allow their use in typical textile processes for the production of various membrane structures, even at a larger scale. PMP-based membranes can find application in separation processes, where other polymeric membranes are not stable. For example, they can be used for the separation of hydrocarbons or gas mixtures with volatile organic compounds.
RESUMEN
Heat stable salts (HSS) formed and continuously accumulated in the amine-based solvents due to solvent degradation and impurities in the feed gas can dramatically change the efficiency of the amine scrubbing process. HSS can be removed by using different methods including membrane separation such as electrodialysis (ED). In this work, we studied the effect of CO2 loading of the lean 30 wt % monoethanolamine (MEA) solution on the efficiency of HSS removal and MEA loss. In the model MEA solution containing HSS on the level of 48 meq/L, the carbon dioxide concentration was varied from 0.2 down to 0 mole (CO2)/mole (MEA). The reclaiming of model MEA solution was carried out by lab-scale two-stage ED unit when the concentrate stream after the first stage was additionally treated using ED (second stage) that allowed reducing MEA loss. It was shown that the decrease of carbon dioxide content from 0.2 down to 0 mole (CO2)/mole (MEA) resulted in a substantial reduction of both parameters-the MEA loss and the specific power consumption with respect to extracted HSS (from 140 down 37 kJ per 1 g of recovered HSS anions). This can be explained by the drop in the total concentration of ions formed by the interaction of MEA solution with carbon dioxide. However, the change of CO2 loading is associated with additional power consumption towards further solvent regeneration in the column. Based on the preliminary estimations of power consumption required for additional CO2 stripping with the respect to the power consumption of ED stage, it seems that lean solvent CO2 loading of 0.1 mole/mole provides an optimum for the power input at 25.9 MJ/kg(solvent).