Modeling of Carbon Dioxide Separation from Gas Mixture Using Poly Propylene Hollow Fiber Membranes in the Presence of Ionic Liquid [Emim][EtSO4]

Carbon Dioxide exists in some gases like natural gas and synthesis gas can make some problems such as reducing heat value, corrosion, and environmental problems in petrochemical like ammonia plants. Using hollow fiber membrane contactors with a suitable absorbent liquid is one of the separation methods in which, cation and anion modification can cause to approach a desired absorbent liquid and higher efficiency. This study's purpose is the modeling of carbon dioxide physical absorption from CO2/N2 mixture through hollow fiber membrane contactors using ionic liquids [Emim][EtSO4]. Mass transfer in the gas, membrane, and liquid phases consists of some partial differential equations that can be solved by numerical solution simultaneously. The model is validated with -Water experimental data due to the lack of data for CO2-Ionic liquids in the literature and it was found that the model with a mean error of about 7.5% was in good agreement with the experimental data which would be an appropriate model to predict the physical CO2 absorption in this study. After validation, the effects of parameters like liquid and gas flow rates, temperature, CO2 molar percentage in the feed gas, the membrane specification, non-wetting, and complete wetting of the membrane are investigated on absorption. The results showed that at a constant fluid flow rate of 25 mL/min, the presence of ionic liquid absorbed about 40% of the CO2 in the inlet gas and an increase of 30 ml/min in the presence of ionic liquid also increased the Carbon dioxide absorption by 15%. Increasing the wettability from zero to 100% will also reduce the CO2 removal efficiency by approximately 15%.