| Industrial Application of PSA |  |
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| Emerging Technology
in PSA application: A new technique is being developed for use in industries that is called Pulsar PSA (Pressure Swing Adsorption) system. Once fully operational this technology would allow oxygen separation to be 200 times faster than what is used now. These would result smaller industrial oxygen plants. Thus leading to a significant reduction in capital outlay and atleast 20% decrease in operating costs. |
With the coming of age of the Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) technology, an important land mark has been achieved in the separation process for gases. Pressure Swing Adsorption is a very clean and effective process that has the capacity to remove one, or more target gases from another carrier gas. A basic advantage of the Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) units that has been used very successfully is its offering as a low cost alternative as compared to other gas separation processes.
To give an example, for production of industrial gases like Oxygen and Nitrogen in the capacity range of 20 to 200 ton per day by Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA), is cheaper by atleast 10-20% than those produced cryogenically. PSA's largest commercial application is perhaps for the Hydrogen purification systems.
Today several thousand Hydrogen PSA plants, with capacities that typically goes upto 10,000 m3/hr and purities of 99. 999%, are operating globally. It is quite common to see integrated PSA units in the plant structures like a combination of steam reformer and Hydrogen PSA unit. More complex combinations are now being made to enhance the overall process performance. From small scale industrial applications like Oxygen concentrators, Nitrogen Generators, Air dyers to the giant leap in the form of application in Fuel cell development, Pressure Swing Adsorption is a technology of the future.
PSA technology is serving a variety of industries from Aviation, Fertilizers, Metal casting to even Hospitals. Preassure Swing Adsorption technology is the separation and purification technique to look forward to. To conclude, although there is still scope for better designs and operation of PSA processes for gas separation, for these the development of new and improved adsorbent materials are also equally important.
Industrial Application of PSA :