Experimental and Numerical Analysis on Impacts of Significant Factors on Carbon Dioxide Absorption Efficiency in the Carbon Solidification Process

Onboard carbon capture and storage is an excellent solution to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from shipping. This paper focuses on the absorption process and CO2 gas flow rate, the geometry of absorption tank and the concentration of absorption solution are key factors affecting the absorption efficiency. This paper will illustrate the experimental results of the impacts of these factors on the CO2 absorption efficiency. Meanwhile, results from CFD simulations of effects of the key factors on CO2 absorption rates will be presented in this paper. Pressure distributions, solution concentration and velocity of CO2 gas and solution are derived from the simulations. The results of the simulations provide fundamentals and insight understanding of the design of a proto-type demonstration system onboard a case ship. In addition to the key factors, the effect of atmosphere temperature was simulated and analyzed. Comparisons between the experiment and simulation have been conducted and the results have shown a good agreement. Optimized values of the factors are obtained from the comparisons and analyses. The numerical simulations of temperature effects on CO2 absorption rate and optimized temperature for the absorption process are also presented in the paper. Corresponding author at: Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, Henry Dyer Building, 100 Montrose Street, University of Strathclyde, G4 0LZ, Glasgow, UK. Tel.: +44 (0)141 548 3344; fax: +44 (0)141 552 2879. E-mail address: [email protected] 2