Study of mass transfer correlations for intensified absorbers in post-combustion CO2 capture based on chemical absorption

Process intensification (PI) technologies such as rotating packed beds (RPBs) could reduce the size of absorber used in post-combustion CO2 capture (PCC) based on chemical absorption processes by about 12 times compared to absorber with standard packed beds. However, mass transfer correlations for predicting effective interfacial area and liquid film mass transfer coefficient in RPBs are limited in literature and their prediction accuracy against experimental data is yet to be compared. This need is addressed in this study by evaluating the performances of different correlations through comparison with experimental data. Of all the correlations assessed, it is found that Lou et al. [1] and Tung and Mah [2] correlations give reliable estimate of the effective interfacial area and liquid film mass transfer coefficients respectively.