Study of Heat-Exchange Dual Semicylindrical and Multi-Coaxial Tubular Adsorbers in Pressure Swing Adsorption Process by Simulation (Ⅱ)

Pressure swing adsorption (PSA) is a cyclic process to separate gas mixtures based on the difference of adsorption capacity of each component on adsorbent. This technology consists of gas adsorption at high pressure and desorption at low pressure to produce high-purity product. The heat released during gas adsorption will increase the bed temperature, which is unfavorable to adsorption. On the other hand, gas desorption is an endothermic process, which will decrease the bed temperature, so it is unfavorable to desorption. In this study, the traditional cylindrical adsorbers are replaced by heat-exchange one-quarter cylindrical or multi-coaxial tubular adsorbers. The one-quarter cylindrical adsorbers are designed to contact and exchange heat to each other by lateral surface area. The multi-coaxial tubular adsorbers are designed to exchange heat to each other by the tube walls. To achieve better adsorption and desorption effects, the adsorption heat released from one bed during adsorption process can be transferred through the wall to the neighboring desorption bed which needs heat to desorb the adsorbed gases in an appropriate PSA operating process. In our current first-year project, we are studying the performance improvement by utilizing dual semicylindrical adsorber instead of traditional cylindrical adsorber. In this proposed second-year project, the research is extended to study one-quarter cylindrical or multi-coaxial tubular adsorbers, and to compare it with the performance of the traditional cylindrical adsorber, and expects to design a practicable pressure swing adsorption process with high performance for gas separation than traditional cylindrical adsorber.