A Mathematical Model of Carbon Capture by Adsorption

Abstract

We present a model to describe the capture of carbon by an adsorbing porous material occupying a circular cross-sectional column. The model consists of an advection–reaction–diffusion equation for the gas concentration coupled to a simple kinetic equation describing gas adsorption on the pores. It is applicable to isothermal and isobaric gas transport with adsorption. The equations are defined in a domain with a free boundary. We obtain asymptotic solutions for large and small times and find good agreement with the numerical simulations. Our solutions show qualitative agreement with an experiment of carbon capture by adsorption in the literature.