Novel Spray Tower for CO2 Capture Using Uniform Spray of Monosized Absorbent Droplets

Conventional spray towers emit absorbent droplets that are nonuniform in size and spatial distribution; as a result, capture efficiency is degraded. This paper presents the design and evaluation of a novel spray tower for capturing CO2 with much increased capture efficiency. The tower uses a multinozzle plate, and can spray sorbent drops of almost the same size vertically and quite uniformly across the flow cross section. Uniform size and spatial distribution of droplets greatly increased the capture efficiency η, although much bigger drops were used, achieving η ∼ 95%, which has rarely been reported to date for CO2 capture by a spray tower. Experimental results were compared with the predictions by numerical simulations in excellent agreement. The new spray tower has a number of strong points that are favorable for scaling up of diameter and length.