Study on CO2 absorption performance of lab-scale ceramic hollow fiber membrane contactor by gas/liquid flow direction and module design

Membrane contactor has been actively studied in recent years, but it is difficult to modulate the ceramic hollow fiber membranes because they are extremely brittle and poor in flexibility. For this reason, research on ceramic hollow fiber membrane contactor modules has been rarely carried out. In this study, hydrophobic modified ceramic hollow fiber membranes were fabricated by phase inversion method. 1-in. unit module, a 3-parallel connection module, and a 2.5-in. advanced module with the ceramic hollow fiber membranes were developed. A membrane contactor CO2 capture system with the module was set up and characteristics of ceramic hollow fiber membrane contactor were analyzed. The highest CO2 absorption property was observed in the configuration in which the liquid flows on the shell side from the bottom to the top, and the gas and the liquid contacts in the counter-current. In addition, a lab-scale ceramic hollow fiber membrane contactor unit module was successfully developed to treat 0.175 Nm(3)/h flue gas with 90% CO2 removal efficiency. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first case of CO2 absorption experiment using hydrophobic ceramic hollow fiber membrane contactor module instead of the polymeric membrane module or single ceramic membrane. These results are expected to be very valuable as fundamental and important data for scale-up of ceramic membrane contactor process.