The separation of acid gases from gas mixtures and waste gases is very important for environmental protection. Acid gases which can form an acidic solution when mixed with water include carbon dioxide (CO2), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and sulfur dioxide (SO2).
Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is generated mainly from combustion of sulfur-containing fossil fuels such as coal or oil. It is also produced from some production processes such as fertilizer production, aluminum smelting and steel production. Sulfur dioxide is a major component of acid rain because it reacts with water vapor in the atmosphere to produce sulfuric acid (H2SO4).
Therefore, there have been many attempts to remove SO2. Among them, membrane-based gas separation is of great importance in the chemical industry due to its simplicity, ease of operation, reduced energy consumption and compact structure.
Ri Chang Ryop, a researcher at the Institute of Nano Science and Technology, has conducted a mass transfer simulation to remove sulfur dioxide (SO2) using tubular membranes, and proposed a general mass transfer model to predict the absorption of SO2 into N,N-dimethylaniline solvent.
He solved the governing equations including continuity and momentum equations by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods. In order to obtain the concentration distribution of SO2 in the membrane, he investigated the effect of parameters on the performance of the membrane by simulating the behavior of the vapor and liquid phases.
The simulation results showed that the removal of SO2 increased with decreasing gas velocity at the membrane surface.
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