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Nitrogen oxide (NOx) is one of the polluting gases harmful to humans and the environment. Nitrous oxide gas is mostly found in air, namely nitrogen monoxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Nitrogen oxide gas in the air, which mostly comes from exhaust gases, needs to be reduced to minimize the threats to humans and the environment and comply with applicable regulations regarding hazards. The absorption process with a membrane contactor is an alternative to reduce NOx concentrations in the air. This study evaluates the hollow fiber membrane modules' performance in the NOx absorption process using sodium chlorate (NaClO3) and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) together as an absorbent solution. Based on the experimental results, the NOx reduction efficiency increased from 96.3 to 99.2% and from 99.4 to 99.7% with an increase in the concentration of NaClO3 from 0.02 to 0.05 M and the number of fibers in the membrane module from 50 to 150. However, the absorption efficiency declined from 99.7 to 99.2% by increasing the feed gas flow rate from 100 to 200 mL/min. The highest value of NOx reduction efficiency, the overall mass transfer coefficient, the flux, and the NOx loading obtained in the study were 99.7%, 0.01743 cm s-1, 9.510´10-8 mmole cm-2 s-1, and 0.026 mole NOx/mole NaClO3, respectively.

As a type of gas that contributes to air pollution, nitrogen oxide (NOx) has harmful effects on humans and the environment. Among several types of NOx, nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) are most commonly found in air. The utilization of membranes as reactors is a system that combines chemical reactions with the separation process through membranes to increase the conversion of the reaction. This study investigated the absorption process by utilizing a hollow fiber membrane module (polysulfone) as a bubble reactor with H2O2 (0.5 wt.%) and HNO3 (0.5M) as the absorbent. NOx feed gas was flown into the tube side of the membrane; the shell side was filled with static H2O2 and HNO3 and the shell input and the tube output flow were closed to create gas bubbles. The experimental results showed that the absorption efficiency increased, but the mass transfer coefficient and flux decreased as the number of fibers in the membrane module increased at the same feed gas flow rate. The NOx loading is relatively constant as the amount of fiber in the membrane module increased at the same feed gas flow rate. The experimental results also showed that the mass transfer coefficient, flux, and NOx loading increased with increasing feed gas flow rate, but the absorption efficiency decreased when using the same number of fibers in the membrane module. The maximum NOx absorption efficiency achieved in this study was 94.6% at the feed gas flow rate of 0.1 L/min, using a membrane module with 48 fibers.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of absorbent flow rate on CO2 absorption through a super hydrophobic hollow fiber contactor. The absorbent used in this study was a physical absorbent, namely a polyethyleneglycol-300 (PEG-300) solution. Meanwhile, the feed gases used in the experiments were pure CO2 and a mixture of 30% CO2 and 70% CH4. Gas absorption using a physical absorbent provides various benefits; for example, it can produce sufficiently high selectivity towards CO2 and it is less corrosive than chemical solvents. Three super hydrophobic hollow fiber contactors, each 6 cm in diameter and 25 cm in lengthconsist of 1000, 3000 and 5000 fibers, respectively, were used in this study. The type ofsuper hydrophobic fiber membrane used was polypropylene-based, with an outer and inner diameter of about 525 and 235 µm, respectively. During the experiments, the absorbent was flowed through the lumen fibers, whilst the feed gas flowed through the shell side of the membrane contactors. The experimental results showed that the mass transfer coefficient, the flux, and the absorption efficiency increased, but the CO2 loading decreased, with increasing absorbent flow rate in the membrane contactor. Meanwhile, it was found that an increase in the number of fibers in the membrane contactor, in general, will increase the absorption efficiency and the CO2 loading, but will decrease the overall mass transfer coefficient and the flux.

Dinitrogen monoxide (N2O) is mainly produced in Horticulture and farming activities, industrial processes and combustion of fossil fuels. N2O is one of the harmful emissions and its global warming potential is 310 times greater than CO2 on a molecular basis. This research aims to absorb N2O from its mixture with air through super hydrophobic hollow membrane contactor using a mixture of 0.5M HNO3 and 0.5 wt % H2O2 solutions as absorbent. In the experiment, the feed gas flowed through the shell side of the contactor, while absorbent solution flowed through the lumen fibers. Experimental results show that the amount of N2O absorbed and N2O absorption efficiency increased with the absorbent flow rate and the number of fibers in the contactor resulting from the increase in the turbulence and surface area for gas–liquid contact, respectively. The overall mass transfer coefficient and the flux increased with the absorbent flow rate due to the decrease of the mass transfer resistance in the liquid phase. However, the overall mass transfer coefficient and the flux decreased with the number of fibers in the contactor due to the decrease of the absorbent flow rate in a single fiber. The amount of N2O absorbed and the flux increased but the N2O absorption efficiency decreased with increasing the feed gas cross flow rate. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 38: 362–366, 2019 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]