Development of a mass transfer model for simulation of sulfur dioxide removal in ceramic membrane contactors

This paper presents mass transfer simulation of sulfur dioxide (SO2) removal in a ceramic membrane contactor by means of computational fluid dynamics techniques. The membrane contactor considered here is a tubular ceramic contactor. A two-dimensional mass transfer model was developed to describe the absorption of SO2 in N,N-dimethylaniline as absorbent. Physical absorption was considered in this work. Computational fluid dynamics techniques were applied to solve the model equations including continuity and momentum equations. The simulations were focused on the behavior of gas and liquid phases to obtain the distribution of SO2 concentration in the membrane contactor. The effect of the operating parameters on the performance of the ceramic contactor was investigated. The simulation results revealed that the gas flow rate has significant effect on the removal of SO2, whereas the liquid flow rate does not affect the SO2 removal significantly. It is indicated that the main mass transfer resistance is located in the membrane and gas phase because of high tortuosity of the ceramic membrane and high partition coefficient for SO2 between gas and liquid phases respectively. (c) 2011 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.