Adsorbent Sheet Parallel Passage Structures for Kinetic Separation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional adsorbent materials in packed beds are limited by cycle frequency and gas flow velocity, restricting the productivity and recovery of kinetic-controlled adsorption processes such as PSA, TSA, and PPSA, which are essential for efficient gas separation.
Innovation Solution
The development of adsorbent sheet-based parallel passage structures that enhance kinetic selectivity, allowing for increased cycle frequencies and gas flow velocities, enabling higher productivity and recovery rates by using materials like zeolite or titanosilicate molecular sieves with tailored pore sizes and diffusivity constants.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional granular packed beds are used, then mass transfer resistance is reduced by using smaller pellets, but flow friction pressure gradients increase and fluidization risk occurs
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies this principle by using thin adsorbent sheets (thickness 1-500 micrometers) instead of conventional granular pellets. These flexible thin sheets eliminate the need for small pellets while maintaining low mass transfer resistance, thereby avoiding excessive pressure gradients and fluidization risks associated with fine granular materials.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent employs porous adsorbent sheets with controlled pore structures that enable efficient mass transfer. The porous nature of these thin sheets provides high surface area and low diffusion paths, achieving effective mass transfer without requiring small particle sizes that would cause high pressure drops.
2Productivity
If cycle frequency is increased to maximize productivity, then specific productivity increases, but mass transfer resistance degrades separation performance
Solution Approach 1:
The thin adsorbent sheets enable rapid mass transfer due to their minimal thickness, allowing the system to operate at high cycle frequencies without compromising separation performance. The short diffusion paths in thin sheets ensure that equilibrium is reached quickly, maintaining effectiveness even at elevated cycling rates.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent optimizes periodic cycling operations by coordinating pressure variations with flow patterns in the thin-sheet structure. The rapid response of thin sheets to periodic changes allows for enhanced productivity through optimized cyclic frequency while preserving separation quality.
3Reliability
If adsorbent pellet diameter is reduced below 0.5-1 mm to lower mass transfer resistance, then macropore and film mass transfer resistance decreases, but flow friction pressure gradients become excessive
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces conventional granular pellets with thin adsorbent sheets having thicknesses of 1-500 micrometers. This dimensional transformation achieves low mass transfer resistance through minimal diffusion paths while avoiding the excessive pressure gradients that would result from using fine granular materials of comparable effective thickness.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention transitions from a three-dimensional granular structure to a two-dimensional thin-sheet structure. This dimensional change fundamentally alters the mass transfer geometry, providing short diffusion paths without the spherical particle geometry that generates pressure drops, thereby decoupling mass transfer efficiency from pressure gradient constraints.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
These structures enable significant intensification of kinetic adsorption processes, allowing for smaller, lower-cost adsorption systems, increased product recovery, and the ability to perform separations previously unachievable with conventional adsorbents, while maintaining high kinetic selectivity.
Implementation Method 1
Gas separation by pressure swing adsorption (PSA) and other adsorptive gas separation processes such as temperature swing adsorption (TSA) and partial pressure swing or displacement purge adsorption (PPSA) are achieved when a first gas component is more readily adsorbed on an adsorbent material compared to a second gas component which is relatively less readily adsorbed on the adsorbent material.
Implementation Method 2
In another important class of applications, to be described as 'kinetic-controlled' processes, the adsorptive selectivity is primarily based upon the differential rates of uptake of the first and second components.
Implementation Method 3
In PSA processes designed to be equilibrium-controlled, the intrinsic adsorptive selectivity may typically be independent of cycle frequency, and depend only on the intrinsic equilibrium adsorptive preference of the adsorbent material in question relative to the fluid components in the feed fluid.
Data Source
AI summary
Improved adsorbent sheet based parallel passage adsorbent structures for enhancing the kinetic selectivity of certain kinetic-controlled adsorption processes, such as PSA, TSA and PPSA processes, and combinations thereof, are provided. The enhancements in kinetic selectivity made possible through the implementation of the present inventive improved adsorbent structures may unexpectedly enable significant intensification of selected kinetic adsorption processes relative to attainable performance with conventional adsorbent materials in beaded or extruded form. Such process intensification enabled by the present inventive adsorbent structures may provide for increased adsorption cycle frequencies, and increased gas flow velocities within the adsorbent beds, which may increase the productivity and/or recovery of a kinetic adsorption system incorporating the inventive adsorbent structures.