Design and development of a bench scale vegetable oil based wet packed bed scrubbing system for removing producer gas tar compounds

The overall goal of this study was to design, fabricate and evaluate a vegetable oil based wet packed bed scrubbing system to study the removal of model producer gas tar compounds, i.e., benzene, toluene, and ethylbenzene. The designed column was 0.5 m diameter by 1.1 m tall and contained 6-mm raschig rings. Soybean and canola oils were used as solvents. These oils were not statistically (p > 0.05) different in removal efficiencies of benzene, toluene and ethylbenzene. Packing specific constants of Billet and Schultes (1999) correlation (CV = 0.80 and CL = 2.40) were found experimentally. These constants can be used to predict height equivalent to a theoretical plate (HETP) of laboratory or pilot scale vegetable oil based wet packed bed scrubbing systems. The pressure drop across the column was in the range of 6.7 to 18.8 mm of water column.