Modeling and simulation of the hollow fiber bore size on the CO₂ absorption in membrane contactor

Natural gas is one of the main sources of energy. It contains mainly methane and less percentage of impurity compound (CO₂, H₂S, and N₂). The existence of these undesired impurity compounds in natural gas are not needed, because the presence of the acid gases in natural gas can cause corrosion and lowering the heating value in addition to their hazardous nature. The compound severely influenced human health and cause global warming. Accordingly, the capture of the acid gases species (i. e., CO₂, H₂S) from natural gas is essential. There are many techniques used for this purpose, hollow fiber polymeric membrane is a promising technique for this purpose. In this article, a numerical model is developed to study the effect of membrane contacting process with diverse fiber bore diameters on the percent removal of CO₂ from a gas mixture by means of aqueous MEA/water solution as a scrubbing solvent. The developed model is validated utilizing data available in literature. The verified model is used to investigate the effect of flow rate of liquid and gas, and membrane total contact area on the CO₂ removal efficiency. Results revealed that, membrane bore diameter and liquid flow rate have strong impact on the percent removal of CO₂. The membrane with smaller bore diameter performs better than the other modules with greater diameter.