SIMULATION OF PSA UNIT OF JAM PETROCHEMICAL COMPANY TO OBTAIN AN OPTIMUM TIME FOR SUB CYCLE OF ADSORPTION IN ORDER TO REDUCTION OF POLLUTION LOAD OF ADSORBENTS

Pressure swing adsorption (PSA) is a low cost and energy-efficient technology to the industrial gas separation processes. In this work a mathematical model is used to simulation of an industrial layered pressure swing adsorption (PSA) unit to purification of hydrogen. This unit consists of five beds, each of them have five layers of different types of adsorbents. The first layer is composed of alumina followed by an impure activated carbon layer and after that three different sorbent layers with different composition of zeolite, mineral binder and quartz are used to purification of hydrogen. The first absorber layer is used as a guard bed. Consequently, the effect of alumina bed on simulation results is not considered. The main impurities of mixture are methane, nitrogen and carbon monoxide. In this industrial plant, the outlet stream has about 99.99% purity in hydrogen and the hydrogen recovery is about 75%.Moreover, in order to validation of the simulation, comparison has been accomplished between results of simulation and corresponded experimental data’s. This comparison shows that the simulation predicts the operation of the industrial pressure swing adsorption (PSA) unit discussed in this study. The main objective of this study is to obtain an optimal sub cycle time to reduce the pollution load of the sorbents