Structured packings with a low pressure drop can reduce the energy consumption of CO2 capture plants. In this work, an experimental and a numerical study of a new structured packing with an inclination angle of 75° were carried out. The packing performance was compared to that of a state‐of‐the‐art packing with an inclination angle of 45°. Experimental results revealed that the specific pressure drop can be reduced by over 90%, whereas for the separation efficiency, only a small reduction was found. Simulations were conducted for industrial‐scale flue‐gas conditions of a gas‐fired and a coal‐fired power plant. For the coal‐fired power plant, only a slight reduction of the separation efficiency was found, while for the gas‐fired power plant, there was even no reduction. Thus, both experimental and simulation results revealed a high potential of the new packing, which appears to be a good alternative to conventional packings in CO2 capture applications. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 64: 4053–4065, 2018

Ein Ansatz zur Simulation von Trennprozessen in Packungskolonnen basiert auf Analogien zwischen komplexen, in realen Apparaten vorliegenden, und geometrisch vereinfachten Strömungsformen und ist daher als Ansatz der Hydrodynamischen Analogien (HA) bekannt. In dieser Arbeit wurde der HA-Ansatz für die Modellierung reaktiver Absorption von CO 2 in wässriger Natronlauge bei vorliegender turbulenter Gasströmung verwendet. Es wurden umfangreiche Absorptionsversuche durchgeführt, bei denen CO 2 -Konzentrationen in der Gasphase über die Kolonnenhöhe vermessen wurden. Der HA-Ansatz konnte anhand dieser experimentellen Daten erfolgreich validiert werden. Absorption of CO 2 Using Aqueous Sodium Hydroxide -Experiments and Simulations Based on the Hydrodynamic Analogies ApproachAn approach for the simulation of separation processes in packed columns is based on hydrodynamic analogy between complex flow pattern in real equipment units and geometrically simplified model flow and is known as the Hydrodynamic Analogy (HA) approach. In this work, the HA approach was applied to reactive absorption of CO 2 in aqueous sodium hydroxide solution under turbulent gas flow conditions. An extensive experimental study was carried out to measure the CO 2 concentration profiles along the column height. These data provided a basis for a successful validation of the HA approach.

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