ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Theoretical and experimental investigation on improvement of magnesium oxide sorbent by acetic acid washing for enhancing flue gas desulfurization performance

A. Bakhshi Ani and H. Ale Ebrahim

Department of Chemical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran

E-mail: alebrm@aut.ac.ir

Received: 5 November 2019  Accepted: 5 February 2020

Abstract:

Flue gas desulfurization (FGD) technologies are applied to minimize SO₂ emission to the atmosphere and prevention of acid rains. Magnesium oxide (MgO) is one of the common sorbents to capture sulfur dioxide in FGD. Pore blockage and incomplete conversion are the main problems of sorbents such as CaO and MgO. In this study, acid-washed technique as a modification method was applied to enhance SO₂ adsorption capacity of MgO. The tests were carried out in thermogravimeter (TG) and packed bed reactor to compare the performance of the acid-washed sorbents with the initial natural samples. The results showed that the acid-washed sorbents has more adsorption capacity than the natural samples. Finally, the single pellet conversion–time profiles and packed bed reactor breakthrough curves for both sorbents were predicted by random pore model (RPM) with fairly good agreements.

Keywords: Flue gas desulfurization; Random pore model; Adsorption; Packed bed reactor; Magnesium oxide; Acid washing

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-020-01093-6

Chemical Papers 74 (8) 2471–2479 (2020)