Investigation of the Water Vapor Influence on the CO₂ Recovery from Flue Gases: Simulation under Various Membrane Module Operating Modes

Despite the development of nuclear and alternative energy, thermal power plants that burn fossil fuels (coal, petroleum products or natural gas) will retain a significant share in the energy mix for a long time. In this regard, the reduction post-combustion CO₂ emissions of organic fuels through its capture, utilization or storage. In this paper mathematical modeling of a CO₂ recovery single-stage membrane process from flue gases of a thermal power plant was carried out taking into account the presence of water vapor on CO₂ mass transfer and without taking into account their influence under different operating modes of the membrane module. Commercially available polymer gas separation membranes were selected for the simulation. The simulation results showed that taking into account the presence of water vapor makes it possible to reduce the required membrane area by 1.6 times. When comparing the operating modes of the membrane module it was shown that the cross-flow and countercurrent modes provide the same indicators of the required membrane area for CO₂ recovery < 80%, while the co-current mode becomes less advantageous for CO₂ recovery > 60%. Thus for low values CO₂ recovery the choice of mode is not critical and for high values the counter-current has a slight advantage over the cross-flow mode.

post-combustion CO₂ capture, flue gases, water vapor influence, membrane module operating modes, commercial gas separation polymeric membranes, mass transfer modeling