Two-Equation Model for Gas Adsorption

The gas flow in the randomly packed adsorption column is axially symmetrical and in turbulent state. 

The driving force of adsorption is the concentration difference between gas phase and outer surface of the solid adsorbent, and thus, the mass transfer calculation is based on the surface area and the surface concentration of the solid adsorbent. 

The column has no insulation, and the heat is lost from the column outer 

The c — c two-equation model equations for adsorption are similar to those of absorption except that adsorption is an unstable process and the time parameter should be involved. On the other hand, the gas adsorption process consists of gas and solid phases, and the corresponding equations should established for each 

Inlet (column bottom, jc = 0) Similar to the absorption column in Chap. 5  

---

Various functional forms for / have been proposed either as a result of empirical observation or in terms of specific models. A particularly important example of the latter is that known as the Langmuir adsorption equation [2]. By analogy with the derivation for gas adsorption (see Section XVII-3), the Langmuir model assumes the surface to consist of adsorption sites, each having an area a. All adsorbed species interact only with a site and not with each other, and adsorption is thus limited to a monolayer. Related lattice models reduce to the Langmuir model under these assumptions [3,4]. In the case of adsorption from solution, however, it seems more plausible to consider an alternative phrasing of the model. Adsorption is still limited to a monolayer, but this layer is now regarded as an ideal two-dimensional solution of equal-size solute and solvent molecules of area a. Thus lateral interactions, absent in the site picture, cancel out in the ideal solution however, in the first version is a properly of the solid lattice, while in the second it is a properly of the adsorbed species. Both models attribute differences in adsorption behavior entirely to differences in adsorbate-solid interactions. Both present adsorption as a competition between solute and solvent. 

On the other hand, as applied to the submonolayer region, the same comment can be made as for the localized model. That is, the two-dimensional non-ideal-gas equation of state is a perfectly acceptable concept, but one that, in practice, is remarkably difficult to distinguish from the localized adsorption picture. If there can be even a small amount of surface heterogeneity the distinction becomes virtually impossible (see Section XVll-14). Even the cases of phase change are susceptible to explanation on either basis. 

Analysis of Heterogeneity. The monolayer analysis consists of three elements an adsorption isotherm equation, a model for heterogeneous surfaces, and an algorithm such as CAEDMON, which uses the first two elements to extract the adsorptive energy distribution and the specific surface from isotherm data. Morrison and Ross developed a virial isotherm equation for a mobile film of adsorbed gas at submonolayer coverage (6) ... 

The first such solutions were carried out by Ross and Olivier [1, p. 129 6,7]. Using Gaussian distributions of adsorptive potential of varying width, they computed tables of model isotherms using kernel functions based on the Hill-de Boer equation for a mobile, nonideal two-dimensional gas and on the Fowler-Guggenheim equation [Eq. (14)] for localized adsorption with lateral interaction. The fact that these functions are implicit for quantity adsorbed was no longer a problem since they could be solved iteratively in the numerical integration. 

The gas adsorption on solid surface data has been analyzed by different models. Gas recovery from shale deposits is a very important example of such surface phenomena. Other isotherm equations begin as an alternative approach to the developed equation of state for a two-dimensional ideal gas. As mentioned earlier, the ideal equation of state is found to be as... 

Adsorption process has been widely used in many chemical and related industries, such as the separation of hydrocarbon mixtures, the desulfurization of natural gas, and the removal of trace impurities in fine chemical production. Most of the adsorption researches in the past are focused on the experimental measurement of the breakthrough curve for studying the dynamics. The conventional model used for the adsorption process is based on one-dimensional or two-dimensional dispersion, in which the adsorbate flow is either simplified or computed by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and the distribution of adsorbate concentration is obtained by adding dispersion term to the adsorption equation with unknown turbulent mass dififusivity D(. Nevertheless, the usual way to find the D, is either by employing empirical correlation obtained from inert tracer experiment or by guessing a Schmidt number applied to the whole process. As stated in Chap. 3, such empirical method is unreliable and lacking theoretical basis. 

Many adsorption phenomena especially of surfactants, polymers, proteins and the chemical adsorption of gases on solids can be well represented by the Langmuir adsorption isotherm. This equation can be expressed in a suitable linear form and we can obtain the two parameters of the model, of which one is the concentration or volume at maximum (full) coverage or the so-called monolayer coverage. Knowledge of this monolayer coverage and of the specific surface area of the solid can help us estimate the surface area occupied by a molecule at the interface and thus the amount needed for stabilization. The specific solid surface area can be obtained from gas adsorption measurements on the same solid. 

Because of the relatively strong adsorption bond supposed to be present in chemisorption, the fundamental adsorption model has been that of Langmuir (as opposed to that of a two-dimensional nonideal gas). The Langmuir model is therefore basic to the present discussion, but for economy in presentation, the reader is referred to Section XVII-3 as prerequisite material. However, the Langmuir equation (Eq. XVlI-5) as such,... 

---