Pressure swing adsorption for carbon dioxide sequestration from exhaust gases

Carbon dioxide removal using pressure swing adsorption (PSA) processes were investigated both theoretically and experimentally. CO2 is the more strongly adsorbed compared to nitrogen in a flue gas with suitable molecular sieve adsorbents. Zeolite 13X was found to be suitable for CO2 sequestration on testing several adsorbents for sorption-based separation. Numerical simulations indicate that the purity of nitrogen gas recovered can be increased from 30 to 90% with the help of PSA operation. The effects of feed flow rate, process cycle time, inert gas content and purge pressure were investigated. The optimal feed flow rate and cycle time were determined for the conditions employed in this work. The presence of inert gas was found to adversely affect the separation. The model predictions show good agreement with our laboratory experiments with promising separation performance. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.