(414e) Packed Bed Column Adsorption and Parametric Analysis of CO2 Onto Palm Kernel Shell Activated Carbon Using Computational Modelling Approach.

Increment in Carbon emission to the atmosphere has become an issue of great concern all over the world due to its remarkable contribution to climate change. One of the major recognized approaches to prevent carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere is carbon capture and storage. They have been several CO2 removal technologies that have been reported, including absorption, adsorption, membrane separation, and Bio-energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS).

In this study, there was an investigation of the performance of a locally sourced adsorbent, Palm kernel shell (PKS) activated carbon in removing CO2 from a continuous gas stream in a fixed bed adsorption column using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) study. The adsorption properties are defined through the use of user defined function (UDF). The investigation of the influence of flow rate and bed height on the CO2 removal efficiency and adsorption capacity by varying the inlet feed velocity and bed packing heights was done using CFD code ANSYS R20 academics.

The results of the investigation showed that the CO2 removal efficiency increases with the bed heights as it was observed when the gas flowed at a rate of 0.00008kg/s to the adsorption column filled with the PKS activated carbon adsorbent of 10 cm, 15cm and 25cm respectively in height.

The parametric study involves the investigation of influence of two operating factors namely inlet and outlet mass weighted average and Area weighted Average on the adsorption process and on the carbon dioxide removal efficiency of the process.