Pure and binary adsorption of CO2, H2, and N2 on activated carbon

A new developing field of application for pressure swing adsorption (PSA) processes is the capture of CO2 to mitigate climate change, especially the separation of CO2 and H-2 in a pre-combustion context. In this process scheme the conditions of the feed to the separation step, namely a pressure of 3.5 to 4.5 MPa and a CO2 fraction of around 40% are favorable for an adsorption based separation process and make PSA a promising technology. Among the commercial adsorbent materials, activated carbon is most suitable for this application. To evaluate the potential, to benchmark new materials, and for process development a sound basis of the activated carbon thermodynamic data is required, namely equilibrium adsorption isotherms of the relevant pure components and mixtures, Henry's constants and isosteric heats. In this work pure adsorption equilibria of CO2, H-2 and N-2 on commercial activated carbon (AP3-60 from Chemviron, Germany) are measured using a Rubotherm Magnetic Suspension Balance (MSB) (Bochum, Germany) in a wide temperature and pressure range. The data is used to fit the temperature dependent parameters of Langmuir and Sips (Langmuir-Freundlich) isotherms and to determine the Henry's constants as well as isosteric heats. Based on this evaluation different methods to evaluate the data are compared and discussed. With the pure isotherm parameters of the Sips isotherm binary adsorption is predicted using an empirical binary Sips equation and ideal adsorbed solution theory (IAST). The results are compared to binary measurements in the same MSB applying a gravimetric-chromatographic method.