Adsorption operations

Adsorption operations

Processes for separation of gases based on the adsorption effect. When a pure gas or a gas mixture is contacted with a solid surface, some of the gas molecules are concentrated at the surface due to gas-solid attractive forces, in a phenomenon known as adsorption. The gas is called the adsorbate and the solid is called the adsorbent.

Adsorption can be either physical or chemical. Physisorption resembles the condensation of gases to liquids, and it may be mono- or multilayered on the surface. Chemisorption is characterized by the formation of a chemical bond between the adsorbate and the adsorbent.

If one component of a gas mixture is strongly adsorbed relative to the others, a surface phase rich in the strongly adsorbed species is created. This effect forms the basis of separation of gas mixtures by gas adsorption operations. Gas adsorption has become a fast-growing unit operation for the chemical and petrochemical industries, and it is being applied to solve many different kinds of gas separation and purification problems of practical importance. See Unit operations

Most separations and purifications of gas mixtures are done in packed columns (that is, columns filled with solid adsorbent particles). Desorption of adsorbates from a column is usually accomplished by heating the column with a hot, weakly adsorbed gas; lowering the column pressure; purging the column with a weakly adsorbed gas; or combinations of these methods.

Microporous adsorbents like zeolites, activated carbons, silica gels, and aluminas are commonly employed in industrial gas separations. These solids exhibit a wide spectrum of pore structures, surface polarity, and chemistry which makes them specifically selective for separation of many different gas mixtures. Separation is normally based on the equilibrium selectivity. However, zeolites and carbon molecular sieves can also separate gases based on molecular shape and size factors which influence the rate of adsorption.

The most frequent industrial applications of gas adsorption have been the drying of gases, solvent vapor recovery, and removal of impurities or pollutants. The adsorbates in these cases are present in dilute quantities. These separations use a thermal-swing adsorption process whereby the adsorption is carried out at a near-ambient temperature followed by thermal regeneration using a portion of the cleaned gas or steam. The adsorbent is then cooled and reused.

Pressure-swing adsorption processes are used for separating bulk gas mixtures. The adsorption is carried out at an elevated pressure level to give a product stream enriched in the more weakly adsorbed component. After the column is saturated with the strongly adsorbed component, it is regenerated by depressurization and purging with a portion of the product gas. The cycle is repeated after raising the pressure to the adsorption level. Key examples of pressure-swing adsorption processes are the production of enriched oxygen and nitrogen from air; production of ultrapure hydrogen from various hydrogen-containing streams such as steam-methane reformer off-gas; and separation of normal from branched-chain paraffins. Both thermal-swing and pressure-swing adsorption processes use multiple adsorbent columns to maintain continuity, so that when one column is undergoing adsorption the others are in various stages of regeneration modes. The thermal-swing adsorption processes typically use long cycle times (hours) in contrast to the rapid cycle times (minutes) for pressure-swing adsorption processes.