Fouling of Impurities in Desulfurized Flue Gas on Hollow Fiber Membrane Absorption for CO2 Capture

Membrane-based absorption shows numerous potential applications for CO2 capture from flue gas. However, during the process, membrane fouling is not only caused by the wetting but also induced by gaseous components (SOx, NOx, and water vapor) and fine particles in the flue gas. In this work, the synergetic effects of water vapor coupling with SOx and NOx as well as the fine particles were investigated to better understand the membrane fouling and the performance of polypropylene hollow fiber membrane modules for CO2 capture in actual industrial conditions. The CO2 removal efficiency and the mass-transfer rate over time were studied under different feed gas flows of various gaseous composition schemes. The membrane performance suffered from a notable decrease after exposure to SO3 and particles, and in a wet gas stream, the effects of SO3 and particles were irreversible, whereas the influence of SO2 and NO2 can be recovered by N2 sweeping. The characterization results of membrane modules confirm that the me...