INLET TEMPERATURE INFLUENCE ON ISOTHERMAL GAS CLEANING FROM MONO-IMPURITIES BY FIXED LAYER OF ADSORBENT

Abstract

The influence of the temperature of the inlet gas containing mono-impurity was evaluated for the process of physical adsorption purification in a porous fixed bed of granular adsorbent. The theoretical analysis is based on the classical mathematical model of the isothermal adsorption dynamics in a porous stationary medium structurally made-up of the dispersed phase of solid particles, under the assumptions made: the gas to be purified contains a low-concentration mono-impurity, its motion in the adsorber is unidirectional, and the levelling effect of the velocity profile in the porous cross section environment allowed to adopt the hydrodynamic regime of plug flow; axial mixing in the gas flow  is negligible; the adsorption heat is negligible; the layer porosity is uniform; adsorption rate is determined by the sorption kinetics equation with an isotherm, obeying Henry's law. An initial-boundary-value problem is formulated for a system of first-order partial differential equations, which solution with respect to mono-impurity concentrations in the gas stream and adsorbent is obtained in an explicit analytical form using the one-sided integral Laplace transform. A comparative analysis of the computational experiment results with known experimental data showed that the proposed model with an assumptions system is quite adequate qualitatively and quantitatively describes the adsorption separation process. Using the example of an industrial adsorber functioning in the ZB-120/120 complex purification unit in a mobile gas production system, it is shown that the temperature increase by 10 K of inlet dried air after compression containing carbon dioxide reduces the working time in the adsorption stage by 45%. It has been established that the temperature change in the gas inlet flow has a significant effect on the adsorber efficiency and should be taken into account when identifying the overall characteristics of the complex cleaning unit.