مسعود مفرحی

Adsorption is often a method of choice for the industrial gas separation. It combines low operation costs with high effectiveness, as well as offering a wide variety of sorbents for a number of gaseous mixtures that are in use within the industry. The process is sequential: following the adsorption, the sorbent has to be regenerated by removal of the retained component. The regeneration is carried out under a pressure lower than that of adsorption; afterwards the sorbent is ready for the next adsorption-desorption cycle. This work presents an experimental and simulation study of a pressure swing adsorption for the oxygen separation from air using a 5A zeolite. The effects of production pressure, blow down pressure, purge and product flow rates, and production step duration on the product purity, recovery and productivity are studied. In this study, differential quadrature (DQ) is used to solve governing equation and to simulate adsorption process. In the experimental parameters range, with constant purge to feed ratio and adsorption time, increasing the production flow rate leads to decrease in purity and increase in recovery of oxygen. Also, in constant adsorption time and production flow rate, increasing purge to feed ratio first enhances the purity but then reduces it; however, the recover gets decreased continuously. In constant feed flow rate and adsorption time, recovery and purity has inversed relationship. And finally, increasing pressure in constant production flow rate and adsorption time increases oxygen purity and decreases its recovery. Also, In this study, the maximum purity of oxygen in product stream becomes 93.2%, by changing the experimental conditions.