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Isothermal column sorption of ethylene—carbon dioxide mixtures with azeotropic behaviour
Author(s) -
Basmadjian D.,
Hsieh S. T.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
the canadian journal of chemical engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.404
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1939-019X
pISSN - 0008-4034
DOI - 10.1002/cjce.5450580208
Subject(s) - carbon dioxide , sorption , isothermal process , chemistry , pellets , molecular sieve , thermodynamics , adsorption , langmuir , carbon fibers , analytical chemistry (journal) , chromatography , materials science , organic chemistry , physics , composite number , composite material
Isothermal breakthrough curves were determined for ethylene‐carbon dioxide mixtures in nitrogen fed to a bed of Linde 5A 1/8″ molecular sieve pellets. The system had previously been shown (11) to have azeotropic equilibrium compositions in the range − 50 to + 50°C and at a total solute pressure of 1.07 kPa. The present column experiments covered the range −15 to + 50°C and total solute pressures of 0.40 ‐ 2.67 kPa. Three major types of adsorption breakthrough curves were observed. In two of these the solutes broke through simultaneously and could not be separated by extending the bed length. Carbon dioxide exceeded and then dropped back to the feed concentration in some of these runs, in others the inlet value was reached directly. In the third type of curve, the sorption fronts did separate, but the light component did not always exceed the feed concentration in the classical manner of a Langmuir solute. A tentative explanation of these phenomena is given in terms of equilibrium theory.