Study the Behavior of Long Spiral Tube Adsorber for Oxygen Separation from Air

Abstract

Single long spiral tube column (25 mm diameter, and 4 m bed length) had beenconstructed to study the separation of oxygen from air using commercial 13Xzeolite. The effect of adsorption pressure on the system breakthrough curves wasstudied. Single column with initial air pressurizing simulates the work of 2-columns, 4-steps PSA process, whereas single column with initial intermediatepure oxygen pressurizing simulates the work of 2-columns, 6-steps PSA processwith pressure equalization steps of the two columns. No significant effect ofpressure on the product oxygen purity is noticed when pressure increased from 2 to5 bar in both cases.For initial air pressurizing case, the average maximum effluent oxygen purity of88% is obtained. The range of zeolite loading capacity is q=0.25-0.35 mole N2/kgzeolite, and only 40% of the range has been utilized before breakthrough time.Whereas for initial oxygen pressurizing case, the maximum oxygen purity of 95%is obtained. The range of zeolite loading capacity is q=0.39-0.87 mole N2/kgzeolite, and 95% of the range has been utilized before breakthrough time, whichagree well with the equilibrium data of multicomponent Langmuir adsorptionequation.