AIR PURIFICATION AND VAPOR RECOVERY BY PRESSURE SWING ADSORPTION: A COMPARISON OF SILICALITE AND ACTIVATED CARBON

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Abstract
Air purification and vapor recovery by pressure swing adsorption (PSA) were experimentally investigated using the silicalite-DMMP-air system. The results from several cyclic steady-state PSA runs were compared at constant throughput with those from a previous study on the BPL activated carbon-DMMP-air system. The performance of BPL activated carbon was superior to that of silicalite because it demonstrated complete cleanup of the product effluent when starting from a saturated column, whereas, at similar process conditions, silicalite was able to cleanup only a portion of the product effluent. Nevertheless, both silicalite and BPL activated carbon respectively demonstrated enrichments (Ye/Yf ) of 12 and 15 using only moderate vacuum. However, there were significant differences in the shapes of the cyclic steady-state product and exhaust profiles which were attributed to differences in the 1) mass transfer rates, 2) adsorption capacities, or 3) possibly shapes of the adsorption isotherms.