Study the behavior of long spiral tube adsorber for oxygen separation from air

Abstract EN

Single long spiral tube column (25 mm diameter, and 4 m bed length) had been constructed to study the separation of oxygen from air using commercial 13X zeolite.

The effect of adsorption pressure on the system breakthrough curves was studied.

Single column with initial air pressurizing simulates the work of 2-columns, 4-steps PSA process, whereas single column with initial intermediate pure oxygen pressurizing simulates the work of 2-columns, 6-steps PSA process with pressure equalization steps of the two columns.

No significant effect of pressure on the product oxygen purity is noticed when pressure increased from 2 to 5 bar in both cases For initial air pressurizing case, the average maximum effluent oxygen purity of 88 % is obtained.

The range of zeolite loading capacity is q = 0.25-0.35 mole N2 / kg zeolite, 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 / kg zeolite, and 95 % of the range has been utilized before breakthrough time, which agree well with the equilibrium data of multicomponent Langmuir adsorption equation.