Date of Award

6-2010

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Petroleum Engineering (MSPE)

Department

Chemical and Petroleum Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. Marcelo Castier

Second Advisor

Dr. Riardo Macias-Salinas

Third Advisor

Dr. Mohamed Younes EI-Saghir Selim

Abstract

In this thesis, the modeling and simulation of the absorption of dilute CO2 into falling film of aqueous solutions of a sterically hindered amine, 2-anino-2-methyl-1-propanol (AMP), was carried out using COMSOL Multiphysics Version 3.3. The operating cases were divided in two groups: (1) gas turbine operating cases (CO2 3 mol %) and (II) boiler operating cases (CO2 8.5 mol %). The key operating parameters for the studied cases are CO2 partial pressure, operating temperature and amine concentration in the aqueous solution. The simulation focused on the following: (1) CO2 Loading in aqueous AMP solution; (2) Required contact time to reach equilibrium; (3) pH of rich AMP aqueous solution; and (4) Total required interfacial area/circulated AMP aqueous solution.

The modeling was validated by solving the model under specific experimental operating conditions and comparing the predicted CO2 loading with experimental results. The percentage error between the modeling and experimental was 3.97%. The CO2 loading in AMP aqueous solution approached one for some cases and is below 0.5 for other cases. High operating pressure, low operating temperature and low AMP aqueous concentration enhance CO2 loading. The compression requirement for gas turbine flue gas was found to be higher than for boiler flue gas. The pH of rich AMP aqueous solution at maximum CO2 loading was 8. The required contact time to reach equilibrium decreases with temperature increases. Finally, the results were utilized to estimate the lower bound to the size of a structured packed column as absorber for 100 MMSCFD total flue gas flow rate.

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