Experimental Study on Removal of H2S using MDEA Solution in Microchannel

Hydrogen sulfide is highly toxic and corrosive component of natural gas that must be removed before natural gas is used in industrial applications. Currently, absorption methods using aqueous solutions of methyl diethanolamine are most commonly employed to remove hydrogen sulfide from natural gas feedstocks. A process analysis of H2S absorption in a microchannel is explored in this work. The results indicate that the bubbles formed at the gas-liquid interface are not consistent in size. The gas bubbles become significantly smaller in volume within 2 seconds of gas flow. There is a noticeable difference in the rate of change in bubble volume for solutions with 20 vol% and 40 vol% MDEA solution. There is also a 3.8% -5.3% volume change within 0.6 s when 60 vol%, 80 vol%, and 100 vol% solutions of MDEA are used. From these experiments, the overall mass transfer coefficient for H2S was calculated and it was found that the overall mass transfer coefficients k(L)a increases with increasing MDEA content.