Adsorption separation of CO from syngas with CuCl@AC adsorbent by a VPSA process

Fei Gao; Shougui Wang; Weiwen Wang; Jihai Duan; Jipeng Dong; Guanghui Chen

doi:10.1039/c8ra08578a

Adsorption separation of CO from syngas with CuCl@AC adsorbent by a VPSA process

RSC Adv. 2018 Nov 26;8(69):39362-39370. doi: 10.1039/c8ra08578a. eCollection 2018 Nov 23.

Authors

Fei Gao¹, Shougui Wang², Weiwen Wang¹, Jihai Duan¹, Jipeng Dong¹, Guanghui Chen¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemical Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology Qingdao 266042 China guanghui@qust.edu.cn +86 532 84022957 +86 532 84022957.
² Fundamental Chemistry Experiment Center, Qingdao University of Science and Technology (Gaomi) Gaomi 261500 China.

Abstract

In this work, activated carbon (AC) supported CuCl (CuCl@AC) prepared with CuCl₂ as precursor is investigated for CO separation from the synthesis gas mixture. Firstly, the CuCl@AC adsorbents are investigated for their CO reversible adsorption capacity at an operation temperature of 303 K. And a vacuum pressure swing adsorption (VPSA) process of CO separation from syngas utilizing the prepared CuCl@AC adsorbent is investigated at ambient temperature and 0.79 MPa through a dynamic optimization with Aspen Adsorption software. The integrated model is closer to a realistic PSA process, making the results of the simulation and optimization more convincing. The adsorption result reveals that the obtained CuCl@AC adsorbent with the copper loading of 7 mmol g^-1 AC achieves a high reversible CO adsorption capacity and adsorption selectivity. The simulation result shows that, under optimal conditions, the CO product with the purity of 98.1 vol% can be separated from the syngas with the CO concentration of 32.3 vol% utilizing the prepared CuCl@AC adsorbent, and the recovery of CO is 92.9%.