Influence of inorganic impurities and operation parameters for the crystallization of NaHCO3 using vacuum membrane distillation

Details

Supervisors

Luis Alconero, Patricia

Faculty

Ecole polytechnique de Louvain

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur civil mécanicien, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

From the industrial era, excessive amount of carbon has been release in the atmosphere, being an unequivocal source of the climate change. In pre-industrial times, before the 18th century, the earth’s carbon cycle was probably roughly in balance. Since, reducing the human footprint has become one of the most challenging and crucial source of interest. Keeping and reducing the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere to a stable level is considered essential to avoid climate disaster. Since natural sink of carbon, as ocean and forest, are saturated and can not mitigate the human emissions. The development of carbon capture storage and utilization (CCSU) is consider as one the of the most viable pathway to achieve deep emissions reduction for the transition to a sustainable low-carbon society. Currently most developed method is amine base-absorption and despite his high performance for CO2 capture, the technique have some drawbacks as high energy solvent regeneration and toxic vapor emissions. Alkaline based solutions are a potentially more environmental friendly reagent For instance, solution promoted by sodium carbonates (Na2CO3) which is a non offensive and widely use omponents. Aqueous solution of Na2CO3 react with the gaseous CO2 to form NaHCO3 that can be separated afterwards for carbon storage or reused as raw material. Na2CO3 + H2O + CO2 ⇀ 2 NaHCO3 With the objective to close the loop of carbon capture, this work investigate the potential revalorisation of CO2 by sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) crystallization using a membrane distillation technique and in particular vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) and crystallization. Crystallization under different operation parameters will be discussed and observations of potential influence due to the presence of flue gases impurities after absorption, NOx and SOx , are studied.