High Efficiency Oxygen Separation From Air Using Perovskite-Type Oxygen Sorbents with High Temperature PSA

From the views of the alternative energy and saving energy, it is very important to develop high efficiency oxygen production processes. We study novel high-temperature PSA (pressure swing adsorption) processes for oxygen production, using perovskite-type oxygen sorbents. This adsorbent can selectively and reversibly adsorb a considerable amount of oxygen at high temperatures (>400°C). The oxygen vs. nitrogen selectivity is extremely high, and therefore the electric power consumption rate of oxygen production will be much lower than that of cryogenic separation.

The pelletized perovskite-type oxygen sorbent was loaded into a small column, which can be operated as a small-scale PSA instrument. An excellent air separation performance (an infinite oxygen vs. nitrogen selectivity, large oxygen adsorbed amount, rapid adsorption-desorption rates) was observed. A mass balance, a heat balance, an oxygen production cost have been estimated and a low electric power consumption rate about 0.2 kWh/ m³N was estimated. It is expected that the combination of perovskite-type oxygen sorbents and heat-recovery PSA technique, will produce a high efficiency oxygen production instrument, which has a lowest oxygen production cost among all other air separation processes.