Industrial TSA Separations Purification

Thermal swing adsorption (TSA) has been practiced with zeoHte molecular sieves for more than 50 years. In the following sections 1 discuss design methods and provide some reference data so that the design process can be understood. 

The requirements for an effective thermal swing design include  

1) The basic adsorption process design. Sub-tasks within that include the adsorbent selection, made in view of aU of the requirements imposed on the dehydration process. The adsorption step time, regeneration and cooHng step times all need to be settled and these in view of mechanical details. The overall vessel configuration, for example, the vessel ID and length, which quantities are typically sized based on pressure drop. Finally we need to make some estimate of the expected service Hfetime for the adsorbent product. 

2) Mechanical design of the adsorber then takes up the remainder of the engineering effort to produce a workable adsorption process design. Once a vessel is sized to provide the required inventory of adsorbenf we need to provide the mechanical details, which include flow distribution devices, bed supports and the required vessel wall thickness to withstand the working pressure and added stresses encountered during regeneration and repeated de-pressurization and re-pressurization. 

3) We need to make reliable estimates of the utilities requirements to run the process. Chief among these for a TSA process is the selection of the regeneration gas and the heat source that will supply the heat 

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