Process Swing Adsorption with Selective Purge Gas Recirculation (PSA-SPUR): Adsorption Process Technology Optimised for Separation of the Heavy Component from a Gas Mixture and Its Design for CO2 Capture through Equilibrium Theory Analysis

Yan Chen, Hyungwoong Ahn*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

PSA-SPUR (Pressure Swing Adsorption with Selective Purge Gas Recirculation) has been developed aimed at separating the most strongly adsorbing component from a gas mixture at high product purity and recovery. The innovative strategy for designing a Pressure Swing Adsorption system features recycling its purge gas stream exiting the column and mixing it back into the feed. This operation enriches the mixed feed with an elevated fraction of the heavy component during the adsorption step, thus enhancing the PSA's performance greatly. Reusing the purge gas helps significantly increase the product recovery compared to conventional methods where purge gas is simply discarded or taken as a low-quality product. For theoretical analysis of a PSA-SPUR system, a bespoke Equilibrium Theory model was developed and solved successfully, providing valuable insights into the performance of the PSA-SPUR system designed for capturing CO 2 from a flue gas. The study revealed that there exists an optimum extent of purging that maximises the heavy component mole fraction in the mixed feed, leading to the best possible feed throughput of the adsorption system. Furthermore, the effects of the desorption pressure and feed composition on the PSA-SPUR system's performance were investigated. The results indicate that the CO 2 capture PSA-SPUR system using commercial zeolite 13X has excellent potential to achieve very high product purity and recovery, being allowed to operate at moderate vacuum pressures without having to compress the flue gas feed, even when the gas feed contains less than 10 mol% CO 2.

Original languageEnglish
Article number130356
JournalSeparation and Purification Technology
Volume358
Early online date1 Nov 2024
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 1 Nov 2024

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • Carbon capture
  • Equilibrium Theory
  • Flue gas
  • PSA-SPUR
  • Pressure swing adsorption
  • Selective purge gas recirculation

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