Comprehensive mass transfer and reaction kinetics studies of a novel reactive 4-diethylamino-2-butanol solvent for capturing CO2

In the present work, the reaction kinetics and mass transfer performance of CO2 absorption into aqueous solutions of DEAB were comprehensively studied. The reaction kinetics was investigated using a laminar jet absorber in terms of a reaction rate constant (k(DEAB)) and enhancement factor (E). The mass transfer performance was evaluated experimentally in a lab-scale absorber packed with high efficiency DX structured packing in terms of overall mass transfer coefficient (K(G)a(v)). It was found that kDEAB was successfully extracted and can be expressed as: k(DEAB) = (4.01 x 10(13))exp(-7527.7/T). Regarding to the reaction rate constant, the reaction kinetics of DEAB can be ranked as PZ >> MEA >> not less than DEAB similar to AMP similar to DEA > MDEA. Also, the predicted CO2 absorption rates obtained from the developed reaction rate/kinetics model are fit favorably with the experimental results with an absolute average deviation (AAD) of 6.5%. For the mass transfer study, the K(G)a(v) can be ranked as: MEA > DEAB > MDEA, which is corresponding well with the reaction kinetics results. In addition, the predictive correlation for K(G)a(v) of DEAB has successfully been developed. The predicted results were found to fit reasonably well with the experimental results with an AAD of 14.6%. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.