Surfactant effects on gas absorption in a coke-oven gas treatment process

The effect of organic impurities in industrial stripped coal water (SCW) on the absorption of CO2 was measured experimentally. Removal of these impurities via activated carbon showed a marked improvement in interphase mass transfer of a vertical wetted-wall column absorber. However, this benefit was not found in a stirred-cell absorber, in which a different flow pattern from that in wetted-wall column absorber is expected. An ad hoc systematic study on the effects of three deliberately added surfactants on gas absorption by pure water in three different absorbers with different flow patterns was thereafter conducted. The experimental results reveal that absorption deterioration also prevails only in a vertical, wetted-wall column absorber and the reduction in liquid phase mass transfer by the addition of surfactant can be satisfactorily correlated with surface pressure of solutions. This indicates that the effect of the industrial impurities in SCW on gas absorption may successfully be simulated under the same flow pattern by a surfactant solution with the same surface pressure. A possible modification of the existing coke-oven gas (COG) treatment process for the benefit of absorption enhancement was finally proposed.