Purification of air from volatile organic compounds by countercurrent liquid gas mass transfer absorption process

Nowadays environmental sustainability is a fundamental requirement for the development of any process. In this regard, European Union applied directives on emission reduction commitments. In such circumstances, it is mandatory for industries or facilities to adopt proper pollution control measures to meet the requirements. The absorption process can be a simple, safe, regenerative and recovery technique, selective for the species. The aim of this work is to study the purification process of polluted air containing volatile organic compounds by absorption towers. The evaluation of the feasibility of the process and the effects of operative conditions on the efficiency will be discussed. Ethyl acetate was selected as a representative volatile organic compound chemical model. We experimentally purified air containing this pollutant at different concentrations by absorption with pure water, changing the temperature and the ratio between water and air flowrate. We investigated the effect of different packagings and their height using two columns: the first one with Sulzer rings and the second one with Raschig structured packaging. Finally, the effect of recycled solvent in the absorption process was considered. PRO/II software simulator enabled a steady-state simulation of the tests obtaining an excellent fitting of the experimental data.