ABSTRACT
Many industrial gas separations are traditionally carried out by gas-liquid absorption. The implementation of these separation processes in membrane contactors can overcome several limitations (emulsion formation, flooding, unloading, or foaming) associated with conventional equipment with direct G-L contact such as spray towers or packed columns. For the design of membrane contactors, characterization of the mass transport of the target solute from the gas to the liquid crossing the membrane must be done; this is specially challenging when a reactive carrier is added in the liquid phase.
The purpose of this Chapter is to offer insight about the phenomena that control the mass transport of a solute from a gas phase to a liquid phase in membrane contactors. Special attention is paid to the transport mechanism and the fundamental equations that describe the process, providing useful information for the development of process design and optimization tools. The performance of hollow fiber membrane contactors in three major separations such as olefin/paraffin separation, CO2 capture and SO2 removal are quantitatively analyzed and compared to conventional absorption equipment. The analysis reported in this Chapter can be extended to any application of membrane contactors where reactive absorption of a gas in a liquid takes place.
