Matching Items (2)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Gas Separation
- Creators: Mu, Bin
Description
Separation of carbon dioxide and methane for the upgrade of natural gas through use of pressure swing adsorption could potentially save large amounts of energy from the current, costly process of cryogenic distillation and provides greater cost effectiveness for carbon dioxide capture, and provide larger product flowrates than membrane permeation separation. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of varying initial conditions of a MatLab simulation, courtesy of Mai Xu, a graduate student at ASU, designed to use Langmuir isotherms, mass transfer equations, and adsorbent and gas properties to simulate a pressure swing adsorption process with a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide gas feed. The effects that will be varied are the adsorption/desorption time, pressurization/depressurization time, adsorption feed composition, desorption purge composition, adsorption pressure, desorption pressure, adsorption flow rate, and desorption flow rate. The study found that the trends in methane purity and production generally follow the trends predicted by literature and relevant equations, with pressure boundaries being the largest impacting factor. In addition there was a markedly inverse correlation between purity of methane product and the productivity of the system. This trend was only violated in one instance, at very low vacuum pressure during desorption, which could indicate an area that requires further study. Overall, the main areas of improvement in pressure swing adsorption for this system would be improving the selectivity of adsorption of carbon dioxide over methane, which requires improvement and change of the adsorbent, and more extreme vacuum pressures during desorption, both of which will increase methane yield and reduce operating costs.
ContributorsCook, Alexander Charles (Author) / Deng, Shuguang (Thesis director) / Mu, Bin (Committee member) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Membrane-based technology for gas separations is currently at an emerging stage of advancement and adoption for environmental and industrial applications due to its substantial advantages like lower energy and operating costs over the conventional gas separation technologies. Unfortunately, the available polymeric (or organic) membranes suffer a trade-off between permeance and selectivity. Mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) containing two-dimensional (2D) metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) as fillers are a highly sought approach to redress this trade-off given their enhanced gas permeabilities and selectivities compared to the pure polymeric membrane. These MMMs are increasingly gaining attention by researchers due to their unique properties and wide small- and large-scale gas separation applications. However, straightforward and scalable methods for the synthesis of MOFs nanosheets have thus far been persistently elusive. This study reports the single-phase preparation, and characterization of MMMs with 2D MOFs nanosheets as fillers. The prepared MOF and the polymer matrix form the ‘dense’ MMMs which exhibit increased gas diffusion resistance, and thus improved separation abilities. The single-phase approach was more successful than the bi-phase at synthesizing the MOFs. The influence of sonication power and time on the characteristics and performance of the membranes are examined and discussed. Increasing the sonication power from 50% to 100% reduces the pore size. Additionally, the ultimate effect on the selectivity and permeance of the MMMs with different single gases is reported. Analysis of results with various gas mixers indicates further performance improvements in these MMMs could be achieved by increasing sonication time and tuning suitable membrane thicknesses. Reported results reveal that MMMs are excellent candidates for next-generation gas mixture separations, with potential applications in CO2 capture and storage, hydrogen recovery, alkene recovery from alkanes, and natural gas purification.
ContributorsNkuutu, John (Author) / Mu, Bin (Thesis director) / Shan, Bohan (Committee member) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05