Development of a new experimental tool to identify CO2 absorption parameters in aqueous amine solutions

The gas-liquid carbon dioxide (CO2) absorption by aqueous solutions of amine mixture is one of the up-to-date CO2 capture technology. This work is realized in collaboration with an industrial partner, which is a design office specialized in CO2 capture technologies by aminesolutions.The solvents developed by our industrial partner consist in various mixtures of several amines. An accurate identification of the kinetic gas-liquid CO2 absorption parameter is required to select the best amine mixture and to design the gas-liquid reactors.This work deals with the development of an original experimental method to identify the kinetic parameters of the CO2 absorption in aqueous amine solutions. This absorption is studied in a Hele-Shaw cell and small refractive index variations of the liquid phase, correlated to the concentration variations, are observed in the vicinity of the gas-liquid interface, using a digital holographic Mach-Zehnder interferometer.First, experiments are performed with aqueous solutions of monoethanolamine (MEA), which is used as a reference case. The deduced parameters are in agreement with the values found in the literature. Secondly, the same procedure is applied to study the CO2 absorption in an amine mixture provided by our industrial partner.