Pressure Swing Adsorption
Pressure Swing Adsorption
Pressure Swing Adsorption
Adsorption
Introduction
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.
Advantages:
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.
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.
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
6. Depressurization of column 2
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:
All the steps are carried out at the same time simultaneously in columns A to F.
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.