Kinetic study of COS with tertiary alkanolamine solutions: 2. Modelling and experiments in a stirred cell reactor

Absorption experiments of COS into aqueous solutions of MDEA and DEMEA at 303 K have been carried out in a stirred cell reactor. An absorption model, based on Higbie’s penetration theory, has been developed and applied to interpret the absorption experiments, using the kinetic data obtained in part 1 of the present work. Experimental and calculated absorption rates agreed reasonably well at relatively low amine concentrations but deviated increasingly with increasing amine concentration. These deviations must very probably be attributed to an underestimation, by the COS-N20 analogy, of the COS solubility in rather concentrated amine solutions. The absorption model has been applied to investigate the discrepancies between the present work and kinetic data for MDEA reported in the open literature. It has been shown that these discrepancies were possibly due to small amounts of rapidly reacting contaminants.