Over the past century, the rapid growth in the world energy consumption has led to increased emissions of CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 is the primary anthropogenic greenhouse gas, accounting for 77% of the human contribution to the greenhouse effect in 2004. The production of carbon dioxide caused by combustion of fossil fuel is predominantly responsible for unfavourable changes in the global climate. According to recent reports, the CO2 concentration which was about 280 parts per million in volume (or ppmv), in the pre-industrial era increased drastically to about 396 ppmv in 2013. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an area of technology that has received a lot of attention recently for CO2 mitigation. CO2 absorption is performed in conventional industrial types of equipment such as absorption towers, membrane reactors, packed and plate columns, wetted wall reactors and rotating packed bed reactors. However, there are certain limitations on conventional columns such as the high operating cost, low absorption efficiency and low mass transfer rate. In the past decade, application micro-reaction technology in gas-liquid absorption has gained significant interest. Owing to their smaller dimensions, micro-channels offered high surface to volume ratios and intensified heat and mass transfer as compared to conventional reactors.
The current project has been proposed to design and develop a fluid distributor to enhance CO2 absorption in parallel micro-channels using an aqueous mixture of amines as a solvent for reactive absorption.