REMOVAL OF SULFUR DIOXIDE FROM EXHAUST GASES USING STRUCTURED PACKING

摘要

The atmospheric contamination is a significant problem for the population of the big cities. This problem has its origin in the burning of heavy oil, that is carried out to liberate its energy content. Its use as a primary source of energy has high pollution effects in its process due to the formation and expulsion of gases and particles as a consequence of its combustion that contaminate the atmosphere. Although it has had enough relative elements of legal type relative to the contamination, specially atmospheric contamination, there is a lack of solutions adapted to the characteristics of the problem for each country. The present work quantifies the improvements in mass transfer, using absorption column with structured packing of high efficiency for the recovery of the SO_2, through the process of removal of SO_2 in the form of CaSO_3. For such study, the hydrodynamic and mass transfer models are used to design the column, as well as to prove different packings (national production, denominated ININ in Mexico, SulzerBX, Mellapak and Raschig) to evaluate the separation efficiency. It is discussed that the ININ packing was one of the best of those tested because it has the highest separation efficiency.