Determination of Porous Media Resistance Coefficients in Gas-Liquid CFD for Amine Absorber with Mellapak 250.X

Structured packings are commonly used for absorption and distillation processes due to its high mass transfer efficiency and low pressure drop. Columns with structured packing should be designed precisely because they are more sensitive to design error than other types of packing. Many experiments and numerical models have been established to investigate fluid behaviors in the structured packing columns. In this work, we performed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of an amine absorber packed with Mellapak 250.X(M250X) for CO₂ removal from natural gas. A porous media CFD model was applied to examine hydrodynamics and mass transfer on M250X in the CO₂-MEA (Monoethanolamine) system. Three momentum forces (dispersion, porous resistance and drag between gas and liquid), mass transfer of CO₂, and one chemical reaction were considered in this model. CFD results were compared to experimental data in order to validate model.