A. Serbezov et Sv. Sotirchos, SEMIANALYTICAL SOLUTION FOR MULTICOMPONENT PRESSURE SWING ADSORPTION, Chemical Engineering Science, 53(20), 1998, pp. 3521-3536
A theoretical study of multicomponent pressure swing adsorption (PSA)
in which the system is considered to be one-dimensional, isothermal, l
ocally at equilibrium with linear adsorption isotherms, and is conside
red to have negligible diffusion effects and axial total pressure vari
ation is presented in this paper. The resulting mathematical model for
multicomponent PSA is a set of first-order quasilinear hyperbolic par
tial differential equations. The similarities between this model and t
he model for multicomponent elution chromatography are used to define
regions of constant state in the physical plane of time and distance a
nd to obtain the solution in these regions semianalyticaly. Simple rel
ations in terms of algebraic and ordinary differential equations which
provide quick and simple estimation of the maximum product purity, ma
ximum productivity, and maximum feed and purge times for PSA processes
with an arbitrary number of components are derived. The application o
f the theory is illustrated by the construction of solutions for a fou
r-step PSA process. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
.