Mass transfer performance and correlation for CO2 absorption into aqueous 1-Dimethylamino-2-propanol (1DMA2P) solution in a PTFE hollow fiber membrane contactor

Abstract 1-Dimethylamino-2-propanol (1DMA2P), a tertiary amine, has been regarded as the promising absorbent with relative higher reaction rate and high capacity for CO 2 capture. The CO 2 absorption into aqueous 1-Dimethylamino-2-propanol (1DMA2P) solution in the polytetrafluoroethene (PTFE) hollow fiber membrane contactor (HFMC) was firstly studied experimentally in the present work. The CO 2 absorption performance in terms of the CO 2 absorption flux was comprehensively investigated by considering a series of operating parameters, including liquid velocity, gas velocity, liquid phase temperature, CO 2 partial pressure, initial lean CO 2 loading in the liquid phase, amine concentration and flow orientations. The experimental results indicated increasing liquid velocity can significantly enhance CO 2 absorption performance over a reasonable range of liquid velocities while similar trends were observed by increasing gas velocity, liquid temperature, CO 2 partial pressure and amine concentration properly. By contrast, there was a severe loss of CO 2 absorption flux with increase in lean CO 2 loading. Counter-current flow achieved the improvement of CO 2 absorption performance compared to co-current flow. Besides, to predict the CO 2 absorption performance at various operating parameters, satisfactory correlations of K G and J CO₂ were proposed for the 1DMA2P-CO 2 system.