78th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (Nov 23 — 25, 2025)

V008: Interface Resolved Simulation of Two-Phase Counter Current Flow for CO2 Absorption

The accelerating rise in global warming demands efficient carbon capture and storage(CCS) solutions. One of the novel methods to capture carbon dioxide at atmosphericconditions is the application of biocatalytic textiles for CO2 absorption. Biocatalytictextiles utilize immobilized enzymes such as carbonic anhydrase to enhance theabsorption of CO2 in gas liquid contactors. In this system, flue gas and low energysolvents like K2CO3 solution flow in counter current configuration. CO2 is absorbed inalkaline solution as it diffuses through liquid film and moves towards the immobilizedenzymes on the textile surface. The performance of gas liquid contactor is sensitive toflow hydrodynamics. A multiphase computational fluid dynamics model is developed tocapture the flow physics associated with liquid phase-controlled mass transportphenomenon. The model utilizes Parallel Hierarchic Adaptive Stabilized TransientAnalysis (PHASTA), a finite element code that can simulate complex two-phase flow.PHASTA solves incompressible Navier-Stokes equation in conjunction with the Level-Set (LS) method to capture gas-liquid interface. The video shows high resolutiontransient 3D simulations can be utilized to visualize the absorption of CO2 within theliquid film. The numerical framework is developed to study the impact of global flowbehavior on the local flow physics to characterize the mass transfer process. It can beused to understand the complicated thin film hydrodynamics and quantify the absorptionrates by estimating the concentration gradient at the gas-liquid interface. Thisframework allows for a parametric study to explore how factors like film thickness,velocity, and flow direction impact absorption. Combining these simulations withexperimental data will provide a comprehensive understanding of the system'slimitations and help create better designs for biocatalytic reactors.Funding Acknowledgement:The project was funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation under Grant numberNNF22SA0078767.