Adsorptive heat recovery

Normally adsorption is conducted at or as near ambient temperature as possible and regeneration is at 350-500°F. A new process developed by Union Carbide Corp, the AHR process (adsorption heat recovery), allows the temperature to rise to 200-400°F as a result of the heat of adsorption and effects the desorption at comparable temperatures with a stream of inert gas... 

Many units have waste heat recovery systems that generate low pressure steam from reaction heat. Such steam is often employed to drive adsorption refrigeration units to cool the reactor feed stream and to increase polymer conversion per pass, an energy-saving process that reduces the demand for electrical power. 

Meunier, F., Second law analysis of a solid adsorption heat pump operating on reversible cascade cycles application to the zeolite-water pair. Heat Recovery Systems, 1985, 5, 133 141. 

The technologies used in the control of gaseous organic compound emissions include destruction methods such as thermal and catalytic incineration and biological gas treatment and recovery methods such as adsorption, absorption, condensation, and membrane separation. The most common control methods are incineration, adsorption, and condensation, as they deal with a wide variety of emissions of organic compounds. The most common types of control equipment are thermal and fixed-bed catalytic incinerators with recuperative heat recovery, fixed-bed adsorbers, and surface condensers. The control efficiencies normally range between 90% and 99%. 

After further heat recovery, final cooling and condensate separation (6), the gas is sent to the pressure swing adsorption (PSA) unit (7). Loaded adsorbers are regenerated isothermally using a controlled sequence of depressurization and purging steps. 

Numerous applications of this type of contactors were proposed for a nmnber of separation processes (e.g., gas purification, adsorption, and drying), as well as for multifunctional reactors. Although the feasibility of some of these ideas was confirmed on the bench or pilot-plant scale, the only process that has been realized on industrial scale up to date was for heat recovery. This application of gas-flowing sohds-fixed bed contactors has been efficiently exploited in France since 1965. 

---