PSA in Chemical Industry

It is a well known fact that large-scale separations of gas are an essential part of chemical processing systems. Using Pressure swing adsorption (PSA) processes, have shown to be cost wise cheaper. They have been found to be operating at reasonable temperatures and pressures and also energetically efficient. For example the separation of air for to produce oxygen is a very important operation in the Chemical processing Industry. This separation was done traditionally by cryogenic distillation. With PSA techniques becoming more competitive and favourable for small to medium scale operations around 20% of air separations are done using adsorption technologies.

Not only oxygen PSA process that produces Nitrogen for use in blanketing reactors and tank containing flammable compounds are also very popular. Recently a pressure swing adsorption (PSA) cycle that is based on the equilibrium-controlled separation has been developed for nitrogen production. This new PSA cycle offers better option in terms of ease of operation as well as productivity. This new PSA technique can produce almost pure nitrogen that contains around 1,000 ppm of carbon dioxide. However, no argon and traces of oxygen have been found. This is surely a very good breakthrough in the PSA technology for Chemical Industry. As the nitrogen that was produced from the kinetically operated molecular sieve carbon based PSA cycle contained pure nitrogen, but around 4 vol. % Argon and trace levels of oxygen were also found. Other than this, it is well known, how Hydrogen is a key ingredient in many Chemical Industries. To obtain such a high purity product, PSA technology is a viable option.