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Abstract
This work has been carried out in the framework of post-combustion CO2 capture process development. Considering the huge amount of
gases to be treated and the constraints in terms of pressure drop, it appears that the absorption column will be equipped with high efciency
high capacity packings such as structured packings. The present paper focuses on the CFD modellisation of the two-phase ow within this
complex geometry. For limited computational resources reasons, it is presently impossible to run computations at large scales taking into
account the gasliquid interaction and the real geometry of the packing and original approaches must be developed. In the present work, a
multi-scale approach is proposed. It rst considers liquidwall and liquidgas interaction at small scale via two-phase ow calculations using
the VOF method. Second, the latter results are used in three-dimensional calculations run at a meso-scale corresponding to a periodic element
representative of the real packing geometry. Last, those results are further used at large scale in three-dimensional calculations with a geometry
corresponding to a complete column. Results are compared with experimental data and with other CFD simulations in terms of liquid hold-up,
pressure drop and unit operation. Some suggestions are made for further development.
2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Structured packing; CFD; Two-phase ow; Packed column; CO2 capture; Gas treatment
1. Introduction
This work has been carried out in the framework of postcombustion CO2 capture process development. It focuses on
the capture of CO2 emitted by power plants using gas, fuel or
coal. This process consists in using an amine based solvent,
typically monoethanolamine (MEA), which removes CO2 from
post-combustion emitted gas within a packed tower, the absorber, and in regenerating the solvent in a second column, the
desorber, by heat regeneration (see e.g. Freguia and Rochelle,
2003). Post-combustion CO2 capture process is mainly characterised by three aspects. First, it deals with huge volume of
gas to be treated. For a typical 400 MW power station, the corresponding gas ux is approximately 1.106 Nm3 h1 . Second,
it is characterised by low CO2 partial pressure, in the range
of 0.040.13 bar which is much less than the values of up to
20 bar observed in natural gas treatment. This implies relatively
Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 4 78 02 25 27; fax: +33 4 78 02 20 08.
low liquid load and large gas supercial velocity. Last, since
this process is located just downstream the power plant operating at a pressure close to the atmospheric pressure, the capture
process must generate very low pressure drop. Since the maximum pressure drop across the CO2 absorber would be around
50100 mbar for packings bed height of almost 30 m, typical
values of admitted pressure drop per unit length would be in
the range of 1.5.3 mbar m1 . These three aspects call for high
capacity, high efciency and low pressure drop gasliquid contacting internals. Due to their geometric characteristics, high
specic geometric area and high void fraction, structured packings are good candidates to meet these three requirements.
Since the work carried out in the group of Pr. Fair at
University of Austin, many studies have been devoted to
structured packings in order to develop models for pressure
drop and liquid hold-up, the latter being further used in mass
transfer models (Bravo et al., 1985; Fair and Bravo, 1990).
Until recently, most of the experimental studies on structured
packings have been carried out for distillation. In most cases,
uids are water or light hydrocarbons and less work has been
carried out with liquids more viscous than water. Since global
warming and greenhouse gas emission reduction have became
a major worldwide issue, recent works have been focused on
amine based solvent for CO2 capture (see e.g. Aroonwilas et al.,
1999; Tobiesen and Svendsen, 2006). Such solvents have viscosities which range from 2 up to 10 cP and little work has
been done on liquid viscosity effects for such viscosity values. Besides, it might be interesting to develop new packings
that would be optimised for such process. The present study
aims at showing how CFD can be an interesting tool to complete experimental work for pressure drop and liquid hold-up
determination for CO2 capture process development. For such
development the two-phase ow within the packing has to be
well understood at local scale to be further used at large scale.
Petre et al. (2003) proposed a rst approach based on mesoscale CFD three-dimensional calculations within said representative elementary units, called REU. The obtained results
in REU are further used in a zero-dimensional model for dry
pressure drop calculations at large scale. In the latter work, it
is shown that most of the pressure drop is caused at the crisscrossing junctions within packing metal sheets. Such results
are of qualitatively interest but, as discussed in Raynal et al.
(2004), they may not be considered for quantitative purposes
since the considered REU geometry does not correspond to a
fully representative geometry. It is believed that in order to be
representative, the geometry must correspond to the smallest
periodic element which can be found in the real packing geometry. Besides those calculations were limited to wet pressure drop that is without liquid. More recently, Ataki and Bart
(2006) made CFD simulations for a metal structured packing,
the Rombopak 4M, with an interesting approach considering
fully periodic elements. The latter packing is made of lamellas and differs signicantly from common structured packings
made of continuous metal sheets. In the present study, the chosen geometry corresponds to the well-known Mellapak 250.Y
packing from Sulzer. Due to the complexity of the structured
packing geometry and the limited CPU resources of calculators, it is impossible to run CFD simulations at the scale of
a column while taking gasliquidwall interactions into account at the scale of the liquid lm. It is thus important to
propose original approaches that enable calculations at large
size with models representative of phenomena occurring at
small scales.
In the present study, CFD calculations have been carried out
in three steps at different scales for the Mellapak 250.Y structured packing. The calculation strategy is described in Section
2. Section 3 shows the results obtained at small scale, dealing
with gasliquidwall interactions at the liquid lm scale. Section 4 shows the results obtained at the so-called meso-scale
which are based on a geometry corresponding to the smallest
periodic element in a real three-dimensional packing. Section
5 is dedicated to calculations run at large scale which enable
discussion about internals and packing designs. Indeed, less
work has been made on gas distributor devices and their impact on the ow eld within the column. Recent studies have
shown that CFD could be an appropriate tool to determine the
gas ow eld above the distributor and below the packed bed
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Fig. 1. (a) Sketch of an industrial gas treating column, (b) picture of structured
packing elements as installed within the column and (c) sketch of the smallest
periodic element within the structured packing.
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Fig. 2. Pictures of the Mellapak 250.Y (a) at channel scales, (b) close view and (c) details of wall texture cut-view.
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Fig. 4. Views of the two-dimensional computational domain used for the simulations at small scale: (a) case of smooth walls and (b) case of walls with
texture, details.
(2)
For industrial conditions, the liquid load varies from approximately 10 to 50 m3 m2 h1 . This corresponds to liquid lm
thickness varying from 0.2 to 0.4 mm. Since these values are
of the same order of magnitude as the amplitude of the surface
texture at walls (A = 0.3 mm), the latter has to be considered.
The same model gives the following expression for the liquid
velocity at the interface, or effective liquid velocity as called
by Bravo et al. (1985), UL,eff :
2 1/3
3
3 gq L
,
(3)
UL,eff = 2 UL = 2
3L
where UL is the averaged liquid velocity of the liquid lm given
by the ratio of the specic liquid ow rate, qL , to the liquid lm
thickness. The objectives of the rst step calculations are to
provide the liquid hold-up and the liquid velocity at the liquid
lm interface. Both the informations are compared to the onedimensional laminar falling lm model and are further used in
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(4)
F = G UCFD (1 hL ),
P
1
= KZ (QG , QL , L ).
2
L
1/2G UG
1
P
= K(QG , QL , L ),
K=
2
L
1/2G UG
KZ =
(5)
(6)
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Fig. 6. Velocity elds within the liquid lm obtained with the VOF simulations
for a liquid viscosity of 2.5 cP. (a) QL = 54 m3 m2 h1 i.e., ReL = 96 and
(b) QL = 161 m3 m2 h1 i.e., ReL = 288.
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for turbulent ow, both models give results with power laws
in between these two values, 1.4 and 1.8, respectively. This
may be explained by the fact that strong changes in geometry
that occur at a similar scale as the hydraulic diameter induce
a complex organisation of the ow differing signicantly from
common fully developed ow. Second, one observes that the
best agreement with experimental data is obtained with simulation run assuming laminar ow. The straight line in Fig. 7
indeed corresponds to the best t as suggested by Spiegel and
Meier (1992) for their own experimental data. The agreement
with present CFD calculations assuming laminar is very good
while turbulent ow models give much higher pressure drops.
This agreement with laminar ow model is obtained while gas
Reynolds numbers cover a wide range from 400 up to 2 104
where the gas ow Reynolds number, ReG is given by
ReG =
G VSG / sin()4/aG
,
(1 hL )G
(7)
Fig. 8. Velocity elds and velocity magnitude contours at the exit of the rst
four packing layers; colourmap in m s1 ranging at 5% around 1.48 m s1 .
less than 2 mbar m1 for this precise case. From Fig. 7, one
observes that it is precisely above that value that discrepancy
between experiments and calculations becomes important. This
difference is thus explained by the fact that present methodology is not able to determine strong gasliquid interactions as it
happens above loading. However, it is not of great importance
since this region corresponds to too high pressure drops for the
CO2 capture industrial application.
One can thus conclude that, for the case of CO2 industrial
capture plants which would be designed for liquid load between 10 and 50 m3 m2 h1 and with maximum pressure drop
per unit length of about 2 mbar m1 , the agreement between
present calculations and experiments is satisfactory. The relationship between pressure drop and local values of gas and liquid velocities may thus be considered for use at larger scale.
3.3. Results at large scale
Calculations at large scale have been run for different ow
conditions and for different column diameters. However, only
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Fig. 9. Velocity magnitude contours at the exit of the rst four packing layers; colourmap in m s1 . Two assembly procedures are compared (a) rst packing
layer plates are normal to the x direction and (b) rst packing layer plates are parallel to the x direction.
one case is presented here, the purpose of the present paper being to demonstrate the interest of the approach. Simulations have been carried out for an equivalent liquid load of
50 m3 m2 h1 and with a gas velocity of 1.47 m s1 which
corresponds to a F-factor of 1.62 Pa1/2 that is almost at 80%
of ooding as previously discussed. Fig. 8 shows the velocity
eld in the y = 0 plane and the velocity magnitude contours in
sections corresponding to exits of the rst four packing layers
of the packed bed. At the exit of the rst layer, the ow is observed to be strongly heterogeneous, and an important portion
of the section corresponds to local velocities more than 5% different from the average velocity. Three layers of packings are
needed to ensure a uniform ow. One also observes that the
velocity contours are oriented along the x direction at the exit
of the rst packing layer, and along the y direction at the exit
of the second packing layer. This is due to the fact that the
equivalent porous media is turned by 90 between each layer
as previously discussed. This type of simulations considering
the structured packing as an anisotropic porous media is found
to be able to reproduce the impossibility for the gas ow to
redistribute itself across the section in the direction normal to
the plates which is characteristic of structured packings. Fig. 9
shows the impact of packing layers orientation. In case (a) the
rst packing layer is oriented such that packing walls are normal to the inlet tube direction; in case (b) the rst packing layer
is oriented such that packing walls are parallel to the inlet tube
direction. The above packing layers are turned by 90 to each
other as usual. The colours correspond to the velocity contours
ranging from 1.35 to 1.7 m s1 . One observes that in the rst
case strong heterogeneities are observed along the x direction,
while they are along the y direction in the second case. More
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