Modeling and Simulation of Liquid Membrane Separation for Carbon Dioxide from Natural Gas

Abstract

A numerical analysis of countercurrent separator unit fitted with a liquid membrane with facilitated transport is presented for the separation of carbon dioxide from natural gas with nitrogen as a sweep gas on the permeate side. Two kinds of liquid membranes are studied: symmetric and asymmetric. A mathematical formulation and calculation procedure using numerical methods to solve material and transport equations is presented for each membrane for predicting the membrane area required to purify a natural gas containing to a desired level of purity. It has been found that the asymmetric liquid membrane provides more membrane area than the symmetric liquid membrane for the same level of separation.