(652b) Designing Efficient Vacuum Pressure-Swing Adsorption (VPSA) Processes for Air Separation Applying an Oxygen-Binding Adsorbent | AIChE

(652b) Designing Efficient Vacuum Pressure-Swing Adsorption (VPSA) Processes for Air Separation Applying an Oxygen-Binding Adsorbent

Authors 

Rubiera Landa, H. O. - Presenter, Georgia Institute of Technology
Realff, M., Georgia Institute of Technology
Amato, K., RTI International
Gupta, V., RTI International
Carpenter, J. R., RTI International
Peters, J., RTI International
Air separation is currently one of the most important gas operations in the chemical industry [1,2]. It is performed typically at large-scale by cryogenic distillation to produce high-purity product streams. Adsorption processes have the potential to substitute the energy- and capital-intensive distillation operations with the right adsorbent and process technology for several applications. Currently, commercial adsorption technologies of different production scales, i.e., PSA & VPSA, exist to realize this separation to generate oxygen-rich streams as well as nitrogen-rich streams, which are useful in a variety of industries [1,2]. Traditionally, adsorption-based air separation employs materials that selectively adsorb nitrogen in order to recover high-purity oxygen as light-product, e.g., commercial LiX zeolites [2]. Nitrogen-rich product streams may also be generated by applying carbon molecular sieves (CMS), modifying cycle configuration & process operating conditions [1]. In the last decades, novel classes of materials have been developed & investigated to alternatively reverse the adsorptive selectivity, i.e., adsorbing preferentially the oxygen species, thus enabling its recovery as heavy-product stream of pressure-swing operations, whilst rejecting nitrogen as light-product—see e.g., Hutson & Yang [3] among others. In this contribution, we investigate vacuum pressure-swing adsorption (VPSA) cycle configurations via process modeling; these cycle designs target specifically high-purity recovery of oxygen. We parametrize single component adsorption equilibria from experimental measurements for nitrogen and oxygen species, adsorbed by a tailored oxygen-binding adsorbent. We feed a full-order VPSA process solver with this equilibrium information, as well as appropriate mass & heat transfer approximations. We apply a state-of-the-art multi-objective optimization strategy developed recently [4], in order to determine optimal trade-offs between performance variables relevant to these cyclic processes. These modeling efforts allow us to better evaluate the potential of oxygen-binding adsorbents, as well as assisting in the design of efficient adsorption-based air separation processes for oxygen production.

References

[1] Böcker, N.; Grahl, M.; Tota, A.; Häussinger, P.; Leitgeb, P.; Schmücker, B. Ullmann’s Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry; Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 2013; pp. 1–27.

[2] Kirschner, M. J.; Alekseev, A.; Dowy, S.; Grahl, M.; Jansson, L.; Keil, P.; Lauermann, G.; Meilinger, M.; Schmehl, W.; Weckler, H.; Windmeier, C. Ullmann’s Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry; Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 2017; pp. 1–32.

[3] Hutson, N. D.; Yang, R. T. Synthesis and Characterization of the Sorption Properties of Oxygen-Binding Cobalt Complexes Immobilized in Nanoporous Materials. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 2000, 39, 2252–2259.

[4] Rubiera Landa, H. O.; Kawajiri, Y.; Realff, M. J. Efficient evaluation of vacuum pressure-swing cycle performance using surrogate-based, multi-objective optimization algorithm. Proceedings of the 30th European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering (ESCAPE30), 2020 (accepted).

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