• Energy Research
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AbstractMembrane Technology and Research, Inc. has proposed a hybrid system combining amine scrubbing with membrane technology to reduce energy cost. Previous studies of CO2 absorption mainly focused on coal-fired flue gas with 12% CO2. However, in the hybrid process, the CO2 in the flue gas can be enriched to 20%. Natural gas turbines will have flue gas with as little as 3% CO2。 Based on the arrangement, the hybrid amine/membrane system provides a gas to the system that has double the CO2 concentration of normal flue gas, reduces the volume of gas sent to the capture unit, or reduces the removal requirements for the capture unit.The objective of this work is to minimize the total energy use of stripping concentrated piperazine (PZ) at rich loading when treating flue gas from 3 to 20% inlet CO2. The base-case stripping configuration is the advanced flash stripper with warm rich bypass and cold rich exchanger bypass. . This configuration includes two split cross-exchangers in series, a convective steam heater, a smaller stripper column, a low residence time flash tank, and stripping at high temperature to produce CO2 at 5 to 17bar. Rich loading in 5 and 8m PZ was varied from 0.37 to 0.43mol CO2/mol N. For each rich loading, lean loading was optimized to minimize the total equivalent work. The “Independence” model for PZ in Aspen Plus® was used to simulate the stripping performance.Because 5m PZ has a lower viscosity than 8m PZ, it can achieve a reduced approach temperature in the cross exchanger. The total energy performance for 5m PZ is practically the same as 8m PZ, even though the capacity of 5m PZ is lower. Significantly more energy is required to regenerate solvents with lower rich loading. As CO2 rich loading increases, the equivalent work requirement decreases for the same loading difference between rich and lean.Stripping data for 24 cases, including heat duty, equivalent work, CO2 output pressure, and optimal cold and warm rich bypass were used to build a correlation with CO2 rich and lean loading. The Second Law efficiency based on the ratio of stripping minimum work and total ideal work was introduced to make the most of stripping work. The Second Law efficiency has a maximum value at a specific CO2 loading.

It is crucial to reduce the energy penalties related to CO2 capture processes if CCS is to be implemented at industrial scale. In this context, gas-solid sorption has become a relevant technology. The absence of large amounts of water when using dry solid sorbents and their high heat capacity reduce the energy requirements in the gas-solid sorption CO2 capture process. Depending on the sorbent composition, the gas-solid sorption process carries out at high or low temperatures. High temperature sorbents allow the utilization of waste energy while energy requirements in low temperature processes will be less demanding. This study is focused on the assessment and comparison of the final energy penalty of low-temperature (amine impregnated alumina-based solid particles) and high-temperature solid sorbents capture process (calcium oxide).

Biodiesel can be produced from vegetable oils, animal fats, and waste cooking oils by transesterification with ethanol (also called ethanolysis) in order to substitute fossil fuels. In this work, the batch ethanolysis of high oleic sunflower oil was transferred into a continuous microstructured device, which induces a better control of heat and mass transfers. Various parameters were studied, notably the initial ethanol to oil molar ratio. An innovative method using NIR spectroscopy was also developed to on-line monitor the transesterification reaction of high oleic sunflower oil with ethanol in microreactors (circular PFA tube 1/1600 OD, 0.0200 ID). The reactions were monitored directly in the microreactors through sequential scans of the reaction medium by the means of an adequate probe. The asset of the method is that no sample collection or preparation is necessary. Partial Least Squares regression was used to develop calibration and prediction models between NIR spectral data and analytical data obtained by a reference method (gas chromatography with flame ionization detection, GC–FID). This method is fast, safe, reliable, nondestructive and inexpensive contrary to conventional procedures, such as gas chromatography and high performance liquid chromatography generally used to determine the composition of crude transesterification medium.

Three gray models for the radiative properties of gases were examined for their usage in oxy-combustion simulations of a full scale boiler with flue gas recycle. Fully coupled computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations of a full scale boiler were carried out employing the weighted-sum-of-gray-gases model (WSGGM) at air burn, dry-recycle and wet-recycle conditions. The resulting thermal and composition fields were then frozen and the radiative properties of the gaseous media recomputed employing the Exponential Wide Band Model (EWBM) and correlations for total emissivities of gas mixtures. It is shown that when high CO2/H2O ratios were encountered within the boiler such as in dry-recycle scenarios, employing emissivity correlations developed for purely CO2 media within the models can result in incorrect gas properties. The errors associated with this can be significant when there are large pockets within the furnace where the gas radiation dominates the particle radiation.

The transportation impact on pollution and global climate change, has forced the automotive sector to search for more ecological solutions. Owing to the different properties of Fuel Cell (FC), real potential for reducing vehicles’ emissions has been witnessed. The optimization of FC integration within Electric Vehicles (EVs) is one of the original solutions. This paper presents an innovating solution of multi-stack Fuel Cell Electrical Vehicle (FCEV) in terms of efficiency, durability and ecological impact on environment. The main objective is to illustrate the interest of using the multi-stack FC system on the global autonomy, cycling, and efficiency enhancement, besides optimizing its operation performance.

Abstract Experimental analysis of viscosity can be a straightforward and inexpensive analysis for few samples. However, in industrial processes that have high demands of properties measurements, the determination of viscosity and other properties involves time-consuming with sampling, analysis and availability of results. Also in refineries, the sampling routines for experimental determination of the viscosity of streams are not enough to represent variations that occur in the process, such as the shift of an oil tank in distillation units. In addition, besides requiring cost of operating personnel and laboratory analyst, all of these steps can take up to one shift until the result is available. Therefore, as an alternative, the use of predictive methods of kinematic viscosity are essential. Empirical methods have been used in simulations and design calculations of streams and mixture at industries regarding kinematic viscosity (KV) of petroleum fractions and fuels at different temperatures. However, there are uncertainties about the most accurate method to use at specific condition (temperature, feedstock, volume fraction) which might affect the KV prediction of fuels with unknown composition. Therefore, we assembled and evaluated several methods to predict KV of different diesel systems. In addition, new methods for predicting KV of diesel fractions at several temperatures were also developed for improving the estimation accuracy. As a result, we developed a guide with suggestions of the most accurate models to be applied for diesel fraction from assays, diesel fractions S500 from blend system at several temperatures, and biodiesel-diesel blends at different temperatures, volume fractions and feedstock.

The reactivity and attrition resistance of Mn–Fe oxygen carriers with addition of Al2O3 as support have been investigated. Spray-dried oxygen-carrier particles with Mn:Fe molar ratios of 80:20 and 33:67 were prepared using different amounts of Al2O3. Each material was calcined for 4 h at 950 °C, 1100 °C or 1200 °C. The oxygen carriers were studied in a batch fluidized bed reactor to investigate their reactivity with wood char, CH4, syngas and also their oxygen release in N2. In order to measure the mechanical stability of the different materials, the attrition resistance was measured in a jet-cup apparatus. Addition of Al2O3 to materials with a Mn:Fe molar ratio of 80:20 was not advantageous. Generally oxidation of these materials was problematic. The Al2O3 supported materials with a Mn:Fe molar ratio of 80:20 calcined at 950 °C and 1100 °C showed poor attrition resistance and were highly fragmented or turned to dust, whereas those calcined at 1200 °C showed high attrition resistance but poor gas conversion.Materials with a Mn:Fe molar ratio of 33:67 supported with Al2O3 generally showed better attrition resistance. Also their oxidation with 5 vol% of oxygen was possible at temperatures higher than 850 °C. Furthermore, some of these materials showed good reactivity with methane, syngas and char. Low attrition, good reactivity and CLOU properties in combination with potentially low raw materials costs, make these materials interesting for CLC.