Dynamics of High Pressure Gas Adsorption On Carbon Based Adsorbents and Its Application In Separation Processes

Dynamics of High Pressure Gas Adsorption on Carbon Based Adsorbents and Its Application in Separation Processes

Ali Qajar ¹, Ramakrishnan Rajagopalan ², Henry C. Foley ^1,2

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, PennState University, State College, PA 16802

² Materials Research Institute, PennState University, State College, PA 16802

This work focuses on the dynamics of adsorption of light gases on the carbon based adsorbents. The adsorbents have been derived from Poly furfuryl alcohol (PFA) in activated, inactivated and composite forms. The molecular sieving properties along with gas adsorption affinities for a wide range of pressures up to 100 bars, at room temperature, are measured. The mechanism of adsorption and diffusion for each gas might be slightly different than the others. Based on that and inspired by the knowledge derived from high pressure gas adsorption it has been tried to synthesize new form of adsorbents with pore size and adsorption affinity tailored to achieve a higher adsorption for a specific gas. Pore size distribution of the samples are determined by CO₂ adsorption at 273 K and N₂ adsorption at 77 K. Using pore size distributions, the pore filling and surface diffusion processes has been modeled by means of percolation theory to find out the optimum porosity to attain a selective adsorption. Then adsorption data have been compared with membrane gas separation results which have been done in our research group before.