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The backfill cycle of the pressure swing adsorption process
Author(s) -
Liow JongLeng,
Kenney C. N.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
aiche journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 167
eISSN - 1547-5905
pISSN - 0001-1541
DOI - 10.1002/aic.690360108
Subject(s) - pressure swing adsorption , adsorption , cabin pressurization , zeolite , oxygen , chemistry , swing , sieve (category theory) , chemical engineering , molecular sieve , materials science , waste management , chromatography , engineering , composite material , catalysis , mathematics , organic chemistry , mechanical engineering , combinatorics
Abstract The backfill cycle in the pressure swing adsorption (PSA) separation of air to produce an enriched oxygen product using a zeolite 5A molecular sieve was studied theoretically and experimentally. The effects of the backfill cycle, cycle configuration, backfill rate, pressurisation rate, and product rate were studied. The theory agreed well with the experimental results in predicting the product oxygen concentration over a wide range of backfill pressures, thus giving a basic understanding of the bed dynamics of the backfill cycle. The theory showed that the backfill rate and adsorption capacity of the adsorbent were the most important parameters governing the efficiency of the PSA process. We showed that, given an adequate backfill pressure, a separate pressurization step could be omitted by incorporating it with the product release step with no detrimental effect on the product oxygen concentrations while increasing adsorbent productivity.