Modeling and Simulation for Pressure Swing Adsorption System for Hydrogen Purification

P. Biswas, S. Agrawal and S. Sinha

Abstract
Pressure swing adsorption (PSA) is a very versatile technology for separation and purification of gas mixtures. Its key industrial application is the production of high purity (99.999 + %) hydrogen. For this, it utilizes different loading capacities of adsorbent at different pressures. Despite tremendous growth in practical applications of this technology, the design of PSA system is more of an experimental basis. The realistic model of a PSA cycle consists of flow rate which varies due to significant adsorption, while the heat effect needs also to be considered due to adiabatic thermal conditions. In this paper, an effort has been made to model and simulate a PSA cycle for hydrogen purification. For this purpose, a system consisting of 4 beds and 8 stages was considered using beds of activated carbon and zeolite. The feed stream was taken as a mixture of CO2, H2, CH4, CO, and N2, which is typical for that used in hydrogen purification. The Newton-based approach was used in solving the model by discretization in space coordinate and time coordinate. The results were then compared for the columns having activated carbon and zeolite packing.

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Keywords
Pressure swing adsorption, layered bed, mathematical modeling, adsorption, purification