Comparative performance of industrial-scale oxygen production by pressure swing adsorption and vacuum pressure swing adsorption under plateau environment
- Resource Type
- Original Paper
- Authors
- Zhu, Xianqiang; Sun, Yuan; Zhou, Shidong; Feng, Fangrui; Liu, Jiahui; Ma, Jiayun; Li, Shuhui; Niu, Zehao
- Source
- Adsorption: Journal of the International Adsorption Society. :1-7
- Subject
- Plateau
Pressure swing adsorption
Oxygen production
Vacuum
Performance analysis
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 0929-5607
1572-8757
Oxygen conditioning on a large scale could effectively improve living and working conditions to relieve the hypoxia of plateau environment. Industrial-scale pressure swing adsorption (PSA) and vacuum pressure swing adsorption (VPSA) medical oxygen production systems are designed for supplying oxygen at high altitude of 3800 m areas. The effects of process parameters and key steps on the performance of PSA and VPSA processes have been experimentally compared and analyzed. The results show that the adsorption time, pressure equalization and purge step are key factors of affecting the oxygen production performance. The PSA cycle with pressure equalization of product end and continuous purge could produce ~ 93% O2 with recovery of 45.4% from compressed air and the minimum energy consumption is 1.21 kW·Nm− 3. The VPSA cycle with pressure equalization of product end and intermittent purge could produce ~ 93% O2 with recovery of 54% from super-atmospheric air and the minimum energy consumption is 0.68 kW·Nm− 3.