Nitric oxide absorption by hydrogen peroxide in airlift reactor: a study using response surface methodology

Absorption of nitric oxide from nitric oxide /air mixture in hydrogen peroxide solution has been studied on bench scale internal loop airlift reactor. The objective of this investigation was to study the performance of nitric oxide absorption in hydrogen peroxide solution in the airlift reactor and to explore/determine the optimum conditions using response surface methodology. A Box–Behnken model has been employed as an experimental design. The effect of three independent variables—namely nitric oxide gas velocity, 0.02–0.11 m/s; nitric oxide gas concentration, 300–3,000 ppm and hydrogen peroxide concentration, 0.25–2.5 %—has been studied on the absorption of nitric oxide in aqueous hydrogen peroxide in the semi-batch mode of experiments. The optimal conditions for parameters were found to be nitric oxide gas velocity, 0.02 m/s; nitric oxide gas concentration, 2,246 ppm and hydrogen peroxide concentration, 2.1 %. Under these conditions, the experimental nitric oxide absorption efficiency was observed to be ~65 %. The proposed model equation using response surface methodology has shown good agreement with the experimental data, with a correlation coefficient (R ²) of 0.983. The results showed that optimised conditions could be used for the efficient absorption of nitric oxide in the flue gas emanating from industries.