Towards Tailored Column Packings for Emission Reduction of Marine Ships

Abstract

With January 1st, 2020 marine ships are subject to stricter sulfur dioxide emission legislation. To reach the emission reduction goals, packed absorption columns are frequently employed for flue-gas treatment on board the ship. However, currently available column packings do not properly match the key demands for this application. The HiPaSEED project aims to provide a new packing specifically tailored towards flue-gas desulfurization on marine ships. In the wake of preliminary studies, an existing pilot plant for the characterization of column packing hydraulics was made fit for mass-transfer measurements. Hydraulic characterization of the column packing Raschig RSP 250Y was performed and results are in good agreement with literature data. Furthermore, first mass transfer measurements using a CO2-NaOH test system were performed. It is indicated that the number of transfer units decreases with increasing gas load. In the future, these findings will be used to derive a new geometric structure for a high-performance packing for an application in flue-gas desulfurization on marine ships.