Applied Chemical Engineering

Simulation study of pressure swing adsorption to purify helium using zeolite 13X

Ehsan Javadi Shokroo

FAPKCO Engineering Group

http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5708-487X

Mehdi Farniaei

FAPKCO Engineering Group

Mehdi Baghbani

FAPKCO Engineering Group

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24294/ace.v3i1.568

Keywords: Pressure Swing Adsorption, Helium Recovery, Mathematical Modeling, Numerical Simulation, Zeolite 13X

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Abstract

A two-bed pressure swing adsorption system on a commercial type of zeolite 13X adsorbent has been studied numerically over a wide range of operating conditions to helium separation from gaseous mixture. The model includes energy, mass and momentum balances. The coupled partial differential equations are solved using fully implicit forth order Rung-Kutta scheme in the simulation. The effects of adsorption step pressure, adsorption step time and feed flow rate on the helium purity and recovery were investigated. Results shown that as the adsorption step pressure increases the helium purity will be increased. In addition, the helium recovery increases, and the helium purity decreases when the feed flow rate increases. Finally, the simulation results indicated a very good agreement with some current literature experimental work.

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