Pressure Swing Adsorption

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Pressure Swing

Adsorption
Introduction

Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) is a cyclic separation in which high pressure


adsorption is followed by low pressure desorption. PSA is used for the
separation of gas mixture. Compared to conventional technology, cryogenic
distillation, PSA requires lesser fixed capital investment and less operating
costs. Against that except in a few applications like purification of hydrogen,
PSA gives lesser purity level compared to cryogenic distillation.

At present PSA is widely used for the purification of hydrogen, air separation to
produce O2 rich steam and N2 rich stream, for the removal of CO2 from the flue
gas of power plant, air drying, etc. On adsorbents like activated carbon,
molecular sieve etc. non-polar gases like H 2, N2, Ar etc., are not bound while
components like CO, CO2, and H2O are bound tightly via Van der Wall forces.
Hydrocarbons like CH4 have intermediate position i.e. adsorbed by weak
binding force.

Basic steps in a PSA system

1. Pressurization of adsorption column with feed. During this stage, product


line valve is kept closed. Column is pressurized by feed gas.
2. Adsorption at high pressure with withdrawal of product at constant rate.
During this stage, feed is continuously fed to adsorption column and
product is continuously withdrawn from the column. Some components
of feed gas are selectively adsorbed via withdrawal force.
3. Depressurization, where the product line is kept closed. During
depressurization, gaseous components which are attached via low Van
der Waal’s forces are removed. But components which are attacked via
strong bonding forces are not removed in this stage.
4. Purging at low pressure is done in counter-current direction or in the
reverse direction of the feed. As a purge gas in most of the cases, a small
portion of the product gas is used. In this step, components which are
attached via strong bonding forces are also removed and adsorption bed is
regenerated.

Advantages and Disadvantages of PSA over Cryogenic Distillation

Advantages:

1. Energy consumption in PSA is very low as compared to cryogenic


distillation. In cryogenic distillation large amount of energy is consumed
in air liquefaction.
2. Fixed capital investment required in PSA is lesser than that in cryogenic
distillation. Higher pressure and more number of compressors are needed
in cryogenic distillation. In addition to that, costly and sophisticated cold
insulation system is required in cryogenic distillation.
3. Cryogenic distillation requires frequent shutdown while PSA does not
require frequent shutdown.

Disadvantages:

1. PSA gives only one product in pure form while cryogenic distillation
plant can give more than one product in pure form.
2. Except in the purification of hydrogen, purity level obtained in PSA is
lesser than the same in cryogenic distillation.
3. No or very less amount of gas is obtained as waste gas in cryogenic
distillation. While large amount of waste gas is recovered, % recovery of
product is less than with PSA.

Skarstrom cycle

To apply PSA at commercial level effectively, two column scheme or two bed
system was developed by Skarstrom. He has used this scheme for air drying. In
this scheme PSA is operated in semi-continuous manner and its operation can
be divided in six steps.

1. Adsorption at high pressure with constant removal of product in column


1.

Small part of product stream is fed from the top of the column 2 as a
purge stream. Counter-current purging is done at low pressure in column
2 at the same time. Hence, at the end of 1 st step, adsorption is terminated
in column 1 and purging and regeneration is completed in column 2.

2. Pressure equalization
During this step, feed flow and product flow are stopped. In this step,
high pressure column1 is connected with column 2. Hence, column 1
which has just completed adsorption is depressurized and column 2,
which has just completed purging, is pressurized. Via this step, wastage
of blow down gas during depressurization is reduced. It result in energy
saving and increase in % recovery of product.

3. Adsorption at high pressure with constant removal of product from


column 2

In this step, column 1 is depressurized further and column 2 is


pressurized. After this step, column 2 is converted into high pressure
column and column1 is converted into low pressure column.

4. Regeneration of column 1

Small part of product stream is fed from the top of column 1. In column
1, counter-current purging is done to regenerate adsorption bed, at low
pressure.

5. Pressure equalization

Pressure equalization is done to save energy and to decrease the wastage


of gas or to increase the % recovery of product.

6. Depressurization of column 2

Column 2 is depressurized further and column 1 is pressurized further. At


the end of this step, column 1 is converted into the high pressure column
and column 2 is converted into low pressure. Thus, the system completes
one full cycle.

List of commercial application of PSA


1. Gas drying
2. Air separation
 Production of 80% to 90% O2 enriched gas from air
 Production of 95-99.9% N2 from air
 Argon purification from crude argon produced by liquid air
distillation
3. Carbon dioxide separation
 Separation of CO2 from the flue gases emitted by power plant
 Separation of CO2 from gas mixture from the fermentation industry
 Separation of CO2 from the gases from cement kiln
4. Hydrogen purification
 Hydrogen recovery from refinery gas (99.999%)
 Hydrogen recovery from reformed gas
5. Oxygen purification : production of pure oxygen or oxygen rich stream
for waste water treatment, in the hospital as a medical oxygen of in
welding
6. Removal of radioactive nuclides
7. Separation of normal and isoparaffin
8. Helium recovery
9. Ozone enrichment
10.For the separation of pure ethanol (absolute alcohol) from its azeotrope
mixture (rectified spirit)

Hydrogen purification
Hydrogen purification is a necessary step in the production of hydrogen, which
at present is done by catalytic steam reforming of natural gas, naphtha or
refinery gases.

The compositions of the three major gas mixtures sources for PSA hydrogen
purification are:

 Steam reformer effluent : 70-75% H2


The major impurity is CO2, with smaller amounts of CO, CH 4 and
sometimes N2.
 Catalytic reformer effluent : 65-85% H2
The primary impurity is methane, with lesser amounts of C 2-C5
hydrocarbons.
 Ethylene plant effluent : 70-90% hydrogen, with methane as the main
impurity

The six-step PSA process for the purification of hydrogen is as follows:

1. Adsorption at the pressure of raw gas with production of hydrogen in


absorber A. at the end of this step, column A becomes saturated. During
the same time, following steps are also carried out simultaneously in
other absorbers.
2. Adsorber B, which has just completed purging, is pressurized from
0.2MPa – 1.6MPa by feed gas. Then, it is pressurized further from
1.6MPa – 2.2MPa via equalization with column F. Pressure is increased
further in column B from 2.2MPa – 2.8MPa by feed gas.
3. Counter-current purging is carried out in column C. Purge gas is obtained
via depressurization of column E and column F. Purging is carried out at
the lowest system pressure at 0.2MPa. Tail gas from C is sent to buffer
drum. At the end of this step, column C is completely regenerated.
4. Counter-current depressurization of column D is carried out and blow
down or tail gas is sent to buffer drum. During this step, pressure in
column D is decreasing from 0.4MPa – 0.2MPa.
5. Concurrent depressurization of column E from 0.8MPa – 0.4MPa. Blow
down gas from the column E is used as a purge gas for column C.
6. Concurrent depressurization of column F. Blow down gas from column F
from 2.8MPa -2.2MPa is used for the pressurization of column B
(Equalisation of B and F). Blow down gas from 2.2MPa – 0.8MPa is used
as a purge gas for column C.

All the steps are carried out at the same time simultaneously in columns A to F.

Once adsorber column A is becoming saturated with impurities, it is


depressurized and then it is acting like column F. in the same time, column B is
acting like column A and adsorption and production of H 2 is carried out in
column B. Pure H2 is continuously produced at adsorption pressure (2.8MPa)
from one of the adsorption columns, with constant purity level.

Tail gas is also produced from 2 columns among 6 columns, but its amount and
composition are fluctuating which is equalised in buffer tank.
Production of N2

For the production of N2, either carbon molecular sieve or zeolite molecular
sieve is used as adsorbent. Here, the former is used.

Air is compressed to 5-12 bar pressure, and then passed through a cooling water
vessel where water vapour is condensed. Condensate is separated from air in
separator. Then, air is fed to one of the adsorber A or B, the other is under
regeneration. Water vapour, oxygen and CO2 are removed via adsorption on
carbon molecular sieve. Unadsorbed nitrogen is sent to buffer vessel at 4-13 bar.

In the same time, other adsober is regenerated by pressure reduction. Blow


down or residual gas is sent out. Product N 2 contains less than 50 ppm O 2, less
than 5 ppm CO2 and 15% (by vol) Argon. Production capacity depends on the
required purity or on the permissible O2 content.

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