Yaping Lu

Analysis of Diffusion in Hollow Geometries

The diffusion in hollow particles of solid adsorbent materials was analyzed based on analytical solutions to the basic diffusion equation. Three geometric shapes (plane sheet, cylinder, and sphere) of sorbent material were considered for two kinds of boundary conditions. The equations for determining the equivalent sizes compared to their corresponding solid particles were obtained directly from the theoretical expressions of sorption uptake curves. Among the three hollow particles of impermeable inner surface, the sphere gives the highest gain in effective diffusion rate compared to the corresponding solid particle. For permeable inner surface, at lower hollow volume fractions, the plane sheet shows the highest gain, while at higher hollow volume fractions, the sphere shows the highest gain in effective diffusion rate.

Pressure-Swing Adsorption Using Layered Adsorbent Beds with Different Adsorption Properties: I—Results of Process Simulation

A simulation study was conducted on layered-bed pressure-swing adsorption, PSA, processes with adsorbents that differ in their adsorption properties. As an example, an oxygen, O2, vacuum-swing adsorption, VSA, process was analyzed to investigate relationships between process performance and adsorption properties of the adsorbents used. For two adsorbents with identical nitrogen-to-oxygen, N2/O2, selectivity but different N2 and O2 capacities, placing the high-capacity adsorbent at the product end and the low-capacity adsorbent at the feed end of the adsorption bed gives a better performance than the case of reversing layering of these adsorbents. However, for two adsorbents with different values of N2/O2 selectivity but identical N2 capacity, changing the bed-layer configuration does not show a significant difference in O2-VSA performance. The advantages of layering a high-capacity adsorbent on product end of the bed are demonstrated by an examination of the N2-loading difference in a VSA cycle. The modeling study also reveals an effect of cycle features (e.g., equalization step) on the effectiveness of using layered-bed configurations in VSA/PSA processes. It suggests that layering appropriately two adsorbents with different adsorption properties could result in better VSA/PSA-process performance than using a single-layer bed with either of the two adsorbents.