Propylene/Nitrogen
Separation in a By-Stream of the
Polypropylene Production: From Pilot Test and Model Validation to
Industrial Scale Process Design and Optimization
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Abstract
Two industrial-scale pressure swing
adsorption (PSA) processes
were designed and optimized by simulations: recovery of only nitrogen
and recovery of both nitrogen and propylene from a polypropylene manufacture
purge gas stream. MIL-100(Fe) granulates were used as adsorbent. The
mathematical model employed in the simulations was verified by a PSA
experiment. The effect of several operating parameters on the performance
of the proposed PSA processes was investigated. For the nitrogen recovery,
a 5-step 2-column PSA process produced a nitrogen stream of 95.4%
purity with recovery of 85.2%, productivity of 6.0 mol N<sub>2</sub>/kg adsorbent/h, and power consumption of 156 Wh/kgN<sub>2</sub>.
Nitrogen and propylene with 96.2% and 97.6% purity, respectively,
were obtained from the 6-step 3-column nitrogen and propylene recovery
PSA process. The nitrogen and propylene recoveries obtained are 98.4%
and 91.0%, respectively. The nitrogen and propylene productivities
were estimated as 4.61 and 1.83 mol product/kg adsorbent/h and the
power consumption as 383 Wh/kgN<sub>2</sub>