A biomimetic red blood cell inspired encapsulation design for advanced hydrate-based carbon capture

Yuxuan Zhang, Xiaoqiang Zhai, Fengyuan Zhang, Zhongbin Zhang, Kamel Hooman, Hai Zhang, Xiaolin Wang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)
26 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Enhancing gas-liquid mass transfer is key to promote gas hydrate formation kinetics. Encapsulation of CO2 hydrate is expected to dramatically increase gas-liquid contact to enhance mass transfer. However, gas hydrate encapsulation has never been proposed as the technical issues of gas permeation through capsule shells have never been addressed. In this work, based on the principles of biomimetics, we proposed a novel red blood cell (RBC) inspired carbon capture capsule to promote CO2 hydrate formation kinetics. An experimentally validated model is established to compare the carbon capture performance in an RBC-shaped and a spherical capsule. It is revealed that the gas uptake efficiency of the RBC-shaped capsule is 143% higher than that of the spherical one. The effect of initial pressure and capsule size on CO2 hydrate formation kinetics is also investigated. Furthermore, the structure of RBC is optimised and it is found the average amount of hydrate formation per surface area achieves a peak when the ratio of the height at the centre to the width of the ring is between 0.128 and 0.160, which is close to that of real RBCs in human bodies. This work enables the informed design of hydrate-based carbon capture units with high gas uptake efficiency.

Original languageEnglish
Article number126985
Number of pages12
JournalEnergy
Volume271
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care
Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Keywords

  • Heat and mass transfer
  • Hydrate formation kinetics
  • Hydrate-based carbon capture
  • Red blood cell

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