Pressure Swing Adsorption in the Unit Operations Laboratory

Abstract

This paper describes a student laboratory in the Unit Operations Laboratory at the Colorado School of Mines: air separation by pressure swing adsorption. The flexibility of the system enables students to study the production of enriched nitrogen or oxygen streams. Automatic data acquisition permits the study of cycle steps and performance. Information from the experiment is readily used extract mass transfer and equilibrium information, providing a basis for system scale up, and in efficiency analysis.