Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION
Increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide result into green
house effect. Therefore, it is required to develop highly efficient and cost effective equipments.
Which are capable of removing harmful substances like fine particulate matter and toxic gases
from industrial gaseous effluents.

Various gas liquid contacting equipments are available in market but dilemma is to choose best
one. To choose G/L contacting equipment becomes difficult when chemical reaction takes place
simultaneously with the mass transfer. In this project work central idea to use an ejector as a G/L
contacting equipment for the absorption of carbon dioxide into sodium carbonate.

Frequently applied models are the stagnant film model in which mass transfer is postulated to
proceed via stationary molecular diffusion in a stagnant film of thickness (Whitman, 1923), the
penetration model in which the residence time of a fluid element at the interface is the
characteristic parameter (Higbie, 1935), the surface renewal model in which a probability of
replacement is introduced (Danckwerts, 1951) and the film-penetration model which is a two-
parameter model combining the stagnant film model and the penetration model (Dobbins, 1956
and Toor & Marchello, 1958).

To understand mass transfer with chemical reaction two important factor must be considered,
first one is Hatta number and Enhancement factor is second one. Hatta number gives the idea
about whether chemical reaction is instantaneous or slow. Enhancement factor tells reactants
consumed by chemical reaction compared to physical absorption (When no reaction occur
between reactants).Enhancement factor is useful when one is required to calculate the liquid
phase mass transfer coefficient that include the effect of chemical reaction.

The major difficulty is a relatively slow reaction in the liquid phase causing low mass transfer
rates and therefore requiring a large contact surface. In order to increase process efficiency,
liquid jet ejector is used.

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Ejector is most suitable G/L contacting equipment due to less maintenance and moving part, it’s
performance can be augmented by putting ejector in series.

Table 1.1 Comparative analysis of different technology [16]

Technology Absorption Adsorption Membrane Cryogenic

CO2 recovery 90-98 % 80-95 % 80-90 % >90 %

Energy consumption 4-6 2-3 0.5-6 6-10

(MJ/kg CO2)

Chapter 2 Literature review includes study on mass transfer theories, jet ejector working
principle, jet ejector application interfacial area and flow regimes inside the jet ejector.

Chapter 3 Kinetics For Carbon Dioxide - Sodium Carbonate System includes study on
kinetics factors that affect on rate of reaction of carbon dioxide and sodium carbonate such as
enhancement factor, hatta number and rate constant for reaction.

Chapter 4 Experimental: Equipment, Set-Up And Procedure includes the experiment detail,
materials and procedure for the experiment work.

Chapter 5 Results and analysis includes graphs that generated from experiment data.

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