Abstract:
In this study, the carbon dioxide (CO2) capture capacity and kinetic parameters from flue gas using alkali metal carbonate supported on alumina solid sorbents were investigated inside the glass fluidized bed reactor. The reactor had 0.025 m inner diameter and 0.80 m height. The main experiments using potassium carbonate (K2CO3) and sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) solid sorbents were divided into three parts. First, the effects of flow regime/pattern measured by pressure fluctuation in the reactor including five flow regimes/patterns, fixed bed, bubbling bed, slugging bed, turbulent bed and fast fluidization bed, were explored. Second, the effects of sorption or carbonation temperature including four sorption temperatures were evaluated. Third, the effects of water content in flue gas including four values were compared. From the results, the turbulent regime provided the highest CO2 capture capacity at 268 mg of CO2/g of K2CO3 and 194 mg of CO2/g of Na2CO3. The highest CO2 sorption capacity was obtained at sorption temperature of 333 K and water content in flue gas of 19.5 %vol. Then, the breakthrough curve was used for calculating the kinetic parameters under given conditions using several model, which were the shrinking-core model, the homogeneous model and the deactivation model in the non-catalytic heterogeneous reaction systems. It was found that the selected deactivation kinetic model fitted well with all the experimental data. The sorption reaction rate constant was highest at turbulent fluidization flow regime. The effects of sorption temperature were described in the Arrhenius from. The activation energies of the CO2 sorption reaction using potassium carbonate and sodium carbonate solid sorbents were experimentally calculated as 12.31 kJ/mol and 14.67 kJ/mol, respectively. The increasing of water content in flue gas made the sorption reaction rate constant to decrease. In addition, the effects of alkali metal carbonate type on CO2 sorption capacity and the kinetic parameters were evaluated. The CO2 sorption capacity of rubidium carbonate was highest when comparing to lithium carbonate, sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate solid sorbents at 306 mg of CO2/g of Rb2CO3