Modeling and optimization of CO₂ mass transfer flux into Pz-KOH-CO₂ system using RSM and ANN

In this research, artificial neural networks (ANN) and response surface methodology (RSM) were applied for modeling and optimization of carbon dioxide (CO₂) absorption using KOH-Pz-CO₂ system. In the RSM approach, the central composite design (CCD) describes the performance condition in accordance with the model using the least-squares technique. The experimental data was placed in second-order equations applying multivariate regressions and appraised applying analysis of variance (ANOVA). The p-value for all dependent variables was obtained to be less than 0.0001, indicating that all models were significant. Furthermore, the experimental values obtained for the mass transfer flux satisfactorily matched the model values. The R² and Adj-R² models are 0.9822 and 0.9795, respectively, which, it means that 98.22% of the variations for the N_CO2 is explained by the independent variables. Since the RSM does not create any details about the quality of the solution acquired, the ANN method was applied as the global substitute model in optimization problems. The ANNs are versatile utensils that can be utilized to model and anticipate different non-linear and involved processes. This article addresses the validation and improvement of an ANN model and describes the most frequently applied experimental plans, about their restrictions and generic usages. Under different process conditions, the developed ANN weight matrix could successfully forecast the behavior of the CO₂ absorption process. In addition, this study provides methods to specify the accuracy and importance of model fitting for both methodologies explained herein. The MSE values for the best integrated MLP and RBF models for the mass transfer flux were 0.00019 and 0.00048 in 100 epochs, respectively.