Gas Absorption

By
Farhan Ahmad
farhanahmad@uet.edu.pk
DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Introduction
Absorption

Desorption or Stripping

Absorption Packed Tower

Cylindrical column or tower

Gas and liquid inlet

Distribution space and Distributors
Gas and Liquid outlets
Tower packing
Packing support

Absorption Packed Tower

Weak Liquor
Strong Liquor
Rich gas

Dilute or lean gas

Types of Packing
Dumped or Random Packing
Stacked Packing
Structured or Ordered Packing

Contact between Liquid and Gas

Distributors
Uniformly wet the surface
Channeling
Ratio of diameter = 8 : 1
Redistributors 5 to 10 m

Pressure drop in Packed Column

Fluid friction
At low gas velocity
At moderate gas velocity
At high gas velocity

Loading point
Flooding

Flooding velocity
High pressure drop
Depends on
Type of packing
Size of packing
Liquid mass velocity

Pressure Drop
For Dumped packing

Packing factor

10

Pressure Drop
Cs =

11

Structured Packing

12

Material Balance
Total balance

Component balance

Over terminals

13

Limiting gas-liquid ratio

Slope of operating line

Cost of absorption

14

Temperature Variations

15

Rate of Absorption

16

Tower Height

17

Relationship between NTU and NTP

18

Number of Transfer Unit - NTU

19

Basic Design Requirements

Gas-liquid or vapor-liquid equilibrium

Liquid- and gas-handling capacity
Required height of contacting zone

20

Basic Design Steps

Solvent Selection
Calculation of Liquid-to-Gas ratio
Equipment Selection

Column Diameter and Pressure drop

Calculation of tower height

21