Advancements in Carbon Dioxide and Water Vapor Separations Using COMSOL Multiphysics®

J. Knox[1], R. Coker[1], R. Cummings[1], C. Gomez[1], G. Schunk[1]
[1]NASA, Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, USA
Published in 2013

Some NASA efforts are focused on improving current systems that utilize fixed beds of sorbent pellets by evaluating structured sorbents, seeking more robust pelletized sorbents, and examining alternate bed configurations to improve system efficiency and reliability. For the bulk separation of CO2 and H2O, temperature changes due to the heat of adsorption are significant, requiring modeling and simulation that was done in COMSOL Multiphysics®. For columns with small tube diameter to pellet diameter ratios, as encountered in internally heated columns, flow channeling along the column wall can have a strong influence on overall performance [4]. With the addition of adsorption physics, this model provides a means of optimizing cyclic parameters for this hardware, and allows for design optimization studies for new Microlith® designs.

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