Mass transfer modeling of absorption and desorption behavior of atmospheric water with an aqueous potassium acetate solution in a packed column

Abstract

The potential of absorptive atmospheric water generation using a liquid salt solution offers the advantage of good scalability and specific uptake potential for atmospheric water. To investigate the sorption kinetics of an aqueous potassium acetate solution, a packed column experimental setup was constructed. A total of 99 runs were conducted to determine the sorption kinetics and the impact of varying experimental parameters. A maximum absorption rate of up to 8.6 g/s from the air was achieved with the mass flow rates and the inlet air humidity having the greatest positive impact on the absorption rate. Furthermore, the mass transfer was modeled using three distinct models for the mass transfer coefficients and the effective mass transfer area. The findings indicate that the Billet-Schultes model exhibits the least deviation from the observed results with an average of 15.6 % for absorption. The Onda (22.7 %) and Hanley-Chen model (16.8 %) demonstrate comparatively higher average deviations.