A computational investigation of high-flux, plate-and-frame membrane modules for industrial carbon capture

• Rigorous CFD modeling of plate-and-frame membrane modules for carbon capture applications. • Validation of CFD model using experimental data from 3D printed devices, showing the accuracy and reliability of the simulation results. • Sensitivity analysis focusing on main process variables, providing valuable insights into the separation performance. • Comparison between rigorous CFD simulations and simplified 1D models for evaluating high-performance membrane systems. • Derivation of a threshold of material properties, beyond which the use of high-fidelity, detailed models and simulations is imperative. In this work, we study the application of membrane-based separation systems for carbon capture, considering plate-and-frame membrane modules. The successful deployment of membrane CO 2 capture systems relies on high-performing membranes as well as effective membrane modules that can fully exploit the developed membranes. A plate-and-frame membrane module is especially attractive for CO 2 capture from industrial flue gas, due to its reduced pressure drop compared to its counterparts such as spiral wound modules and hollow fiber modules. To design better plate-and-frame modules, we investigate their basic unit - a single membrane stack through a combination of computational modeling and experimental investigations. The modeling approach is based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to represent the multiphysics problem, including the fluid flow and diffusion processes within a membrane module. We use experimental data collected under different operating conditions to validate the CFD model. Numerical results suggest good agreement between experiments and model outputs for CO 2 recovery, CO 2 mole fractions in the retentate and permeate, and stage cut. The CFD model is able to predict accurately the flow behavior, providing valuable insights into the effects of fluid dynamics on the mass transfer of CO 2 . CFD models achieve high accuracy by capturing complex permeate-side flow patterns exhibiting a 4.5% maximum relative error compared to experiments. Results suggest that deviations of 1D models, assuming ideal flow patterns, from the CFD increase as separation properties improve with material advancements, and can be as high as 21% for some cases. We also carry out a sensitivity analysis to identify the effect of key parameters on the CO 2 recovery and the CO 2 purity of the outlet streams.