CO2 REMOVAL EFFICIENCY FROM NATURAL GAS AT ELEVATED PRESSURE OF PACKED ABSORPTION COLUMN USING POTASSIUM CARBONATE PROMOTED WITH GLYCINE

Abstract

This article reports the absorption removal efficiency for carbon dioxide (CO2) capture from natural gas using an environmental friendly solvent, potassium carbonate promoted with glycine. Recently, CO2 capture using this solvent (with precipitating) was studied by previous researchers. However, the precipitates of the solvent increase the potential of blockage in the packing and piping thus result failure in absorption processes. Therefore, this study focused to assess the CO2 removal efficiency of non-precipitating potassium carbonate promoted with glycine. This green solvent contains aqueous blend of 20 wt% potassium carbonate and 8 wt% glycine. The absorption performance of the solvent was obtained by demonstrated a few experimental works using a bench scale packed absorption column. The packing type was Sulzer metal gauze and the column consisted of six sampling point which located equidistance along the packing The system was running over a range of liquid flow rate 1.81-7.22 m3/m2.h at fixed operating pressure (4 Mpa), CO2 inlet concentration (20%), gas flow rate (33 kmol/m2.h) and solvent temperature (60 . The effect of liquid flow rate was assessed in term of its CO2 removal efficiency and concentration profile along the packing. The study shows the increasing trend of CO2 removal as liquid flow rate increases. Higher liquid/molar flow rate gas (L/G) offers a better absorption performance compared to lower L/G ratio. This study demonstrated the efficient absorption up to 77 % using non-precipitating potassium carbonate promoted with glycine.