Mass Transfer of CO₂ Into Water and Surfactant Solutions

Abstract

The mass transfer of CO₂ into water and aqueous solutions of sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) is experimentally studied using a pressure, volume, temperature (PVT) cell at different initial pressures and a constant temperature (T = 25°C). It is observed that the transfer rate is initially much larger than expected from a diffusion process alone. The model equations describing the experiments are based on Fick's Law and Henry's Law. The experiments are interpreted in terms of two effective diffusion coefficients—one for the early-stages of the experiments and the other one for the later stages. The results show that at the early stages, the effective diffusion coefficients are one order of magnitude larger than the molecular diffusivity of CO₂ in water. Nevertheless, in the later stages the extracted diffusion coefficients are close to literature values. It is asserted that at the early stages, density-driven natural convection enhances the mass transfer. A similar mass transfer enhancement was observed for the mass transfer between a gaseous CO₂ rich phase with an oil (n-decane) phase. It is also found that at the experimental conditions studied addition of pure SDS does not have a significant effect on the mass transfer rate of CO₂ in water.

Keywords:

• CO₂
• effective diffusion coefficient
• mass transfer
• natural convection
• surfactant

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was funded by a special program of the TU Delft, Delft Earth Research. We thank the staff of Dietz Laboratory of our faculty, especially H. van der Meulen and P. de Vreede for their technical support.