preview

Hydrate Essay

Decent Essays

Hydrate-based CO2 separation is a new technology by which the exhaust gas containing CO2 is exposed to water under high pressure forming hydrates. The mechanism is based on the differences of phase equilibrium. Gas hydrates are crystalline solids, in which low molecular weight guest molecules are trapped inside cages of hydrogen-bonded water molecule. A given hydrate structure is typically determined by the size and shape of the guest molecule. Carbon dioxide is known to form structure I. Each cavity may encapsulate one—or in rare cases more—guest molecules of proper sizes. It is the presence of the guest molecule that stabilizes the crystalline water structure at temperatures well above the normal freezing point. As a separation method, gas hydrates may be used with treated flue gas from power plants in which CO2 is separated from N2 and O2. …show more content…

CO2 is preferentially encaged into the hydrate crystal phase compared to the other components. For instance, the equilibrium pressure of N2 hydrate is three times greater than that of CO2. This difference allows to separate CO2 from treated flue gas, i.e. a CO2-N2 mixture [14].
Flue gas from power plants usually contains from 15% to 20% mol. of CO2 and are released at atmospheric pressure. The gas/hydrate equilibrium pressure for this kind of gas mixture is relatively high. For example, the equilibrium pressures for a gas mixture containing CO2 at 17.61% mol. are 7.6 MPa and 11.0 MPa at 274 K and 277 K, respectively [15]. These pressures are not compatible with the industrial reality, since the operative cost will be expensive if it is necessary to compress the gas to the hydrate formation pressure. Consequently, the main challenge is to obtain a decrease in the operating pressure. This task can be achieved using specific

Get Access