Hi everyone,
I am at the beginning stages of doing my individual design project which involves designing a CO2 Absorber to remove ethanol and VOC from CO2, produced in the fermentation of ethanol.
The first part of the project was group work to design a sugar and ethanol plant so I am working with the material balance conducted by my teammates, which I can not change.
The inlet mass fraction of each component at 306K and 1atm is:
CO2 at 95%
Ethanol at 4%
VOC at 1%
After researching physical and chemical solvents, I decided to go with a physical solvent such as water because as previously mentioned sugar is also being produced and I looked into the potential risk of using a chemical solvent in a food production industry. Also everything I find concerning ethanol-CO2 absorber from the fermentation process used water as the solvent due to the volatile organic components in the feed.
However, I am thinking that this system may not work after researching the solubility of ethanol-CO2 (around 55.9 at 1atm and 306K) and comparing it to what I have (which is much smaller). Since ethanol is at 4% I looked into condensing the ethanol instead and then feed the CO2-VOC mix into an activated carbon system.
What are your thoughts about this? As am at the beginning unfortunately I have no PFD and detailed mass balances conducted I know it would be better if I did but am still trying to research the potential of the system wohe volatile organic components in the feed.
Your advice is much appreciated
Edited by Pressure Vessel Design, 17 January 2015 - 04:13 PM.