New 3-dimensional CFD modeling of CO₂ and H₂S simultaneous stripping from water within PVDF hollow fiber membrane contactor

Abstract

In this paper a 3-dimensional modeling of simultaneous stripping of carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) from water using hollow fiber membrane made of polyvinylidene fluoride is developed. The water, containing CO2 and H2S enters to the membrane as feed. At the same time, pure nitrogen flow in the shell side of a shell and tube hollow fiber as the solvent. In the previous methods of modeling hollow fiber membranes just one of the membranes was modeled and the results expand to whole shell and tube system. In this research the whole hollow fiber shell and tube module is modeled to reduce the errors. Simulation results showed that increasing the velocity of solvent flow and decreasing the velocity of the feed are leads to increase in the system yield. However the effect of the feed velocity on the process is likely more than the influence of changing the velocity of the gaseous solvent. In addition H2S stripping has higher yield in comparison with CO2 stripping. This model is compared to the previous modeling methods and shows that the new model is more accurate. Finally, the effect of feed temperature is studied using response surface method and the operating conditions of feed temperature, feed velocity, and solvent velocity is optimized according to synergistic effects. Simulation results show that, in the optimum operating conditions the removal percentage of H2S and CO2 are 27 and 21 % respectively.