Kinetic Study of Reactive SO2 Absorption in a Jet Bubbling Reactor: Experimental Determination of Mass Transfer Coefficients and Absorption Rate

The reactive absorption kinetics for SO2 removal from flue gas was studied by the use of a saturated solution of Ca(OH)(2) in a bench-scale jet bubbling reactor (JBR). Gas- and liquid-side mass transfer coefficients were determined using suitable chemical and physical absorption methods in the JBR. The influences of main parameters, such as the gas flowrate, concentration of inlet SO2, slurry pH, slurry temperature, and sparger submergence depth, were investigated on the rate of SO2 absorption in the JBR. The results obtained from the kinetic study of SO2 absorption by Ca(OH)(2) solution showed that the reaction was empirically a pseudo-first-order fast reaction concerning SO2. The mass transfer rate in this process was much lower than the chemical reaction rate; therefore, the mass transfer was the main controlling step. Moreover, a model was proposed and validated for the absorption rate of SO2 into Ca(OH)(2) in the JBR. The validation results showed that the calculated values were in good agreement with experimental data.