Mass transfer performance of structured packings in a CO2 absorption tower

This paper studies the mass transfer performance of structured packings in the absorption of CO₂ from air with aqueous NaOH solution. The Eight structured packings tested are sheet metal ones with corrugations of different geometry parameters. Effective mass transfer area and overall gas phase mass transfer coefficient have been measured in an absorption column of 200 mm diameter under the conditions of gas F-factor in 0.38-1.52 Pa^0.5 and aqueous NaOH solution concentration of 0.10-0.15 kmol·m^-3. The effects of gas/liquid phase flow rates and packing geometry parameters are also investigated. The results show that the effective mass transfer area changes not only with packing geometry parameters and liquid load, but also with gas F-factor. A new effective mass transfer area correlation on the gas F-factor and the liquid load was proposed, which is found to fit experiment data very well.