مسعود مفرحی

In recent years, more attention paid to application of the cyclic separation adsorption processes in oxygen and nitrogen production from air and follows by researchers. Today, the pressure swing adsorption process (PSA) completely has recognized in the wide region of processes and prefers to other processes specially, for lower production scales and higher product purities. 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, purge and product flow rates, and production step duration on the product purity, recovery and productivity are studied. In this study, Finite Difference is used to solve governing equation and to simulate adsorption process. In order to realization of experimental section, a two-bed semi-industrial unit was set up in Persian Gulf University (designed by Dr. Masoud Mofarhi) with a length of 76 cm, an i.d. of 4.274 cm and an o.d. of 4.83 cm and also equipped with control and analysis systems of feed and product streams. 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 In this study, the maximum purity of oxygen in product stream becomes 91.8%, by changing the experimental conditions.