Heat and mass transfer during H2O/CO2 adsorption separation using activated alumina

Adsorption separation technology has great potential to separate H2O/CO2 mixture with 1-5% H2O to achieve high CO2 purity for industrial applications. However, there are few studies analyzing the concentration and velocity fields in an adsorption column and the characteristics of H2O/CO2 adsorption separation. A heat and mass transfer model of H2O/CO2 adsorption on aluminum activated F-200 was developed and validated experimentally to predict the breakthrough curves and the H2O/CO2 distributions in the gas and solid phases. The effects of mixture inlet velocity, inlet temperature, steam mole fraction and total pressure on the separation performance have been investigated numerically. As velocity increases, the breakthrough and equilibrium times decrease. The peak temperature gradually increases with increasing H2O concentration, temperature and pressure. Along the height of the adsorption column, the adsorption ratio, the ratio of the amount adsorbed to the equilibrium amount adsorbed first decreases and then increases with increasing H2O mole fraction, but first increases and then decreases with increasing pressure. The heat and mass transfer characteristics of the H2O/CO2 adsorption separation can provide a basis for high purity CO2 separation.