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Stable oxygen-selective sorbents for air separation

  • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

32 Scopus citations

Abstract

Commercial sorption-based air separation is usually done using nitrogen selective zeolites in pressure swing adsorption (PSA) systems. Separation of air by adsorption of less abundant oxygen is more desirable. In this study we have developed some stable oxygen selective sorbents with silver and cerium salts. AgCl, AgBr, AgI and CeCl3 all showed stable adsorption characteristics with pure component selectivity of O2/N2 ∼ 2.0-3.0 at 1 atm. For these salts heat of adsorption of oxygen was found to be slightly higher than that of nitrogen, which was also predicted by ab initio molecular orbital calculations by Chen and Yang (Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 35 (1996) 4020). The adsorption capacity of these salts was increased by thermal dispersion on high surface area SiO2 support. AgBr thermally spread on SiO2 is the best sorbent obtained in this study. AgBr/SiO 2 (1.0 g/g) showed a pure component oxygen selectivity of ∼ 3 at 1 atm and ∼ 5 at 7 atm. PSA simulations were used to show the feasibility of nitrogen production using AgBr/SiO2.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)625-634
Number of pages10
JournalChemical Engineering Science
Volume60
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2005

Keywords

  • AgBr/SiO
  • Air separation
  • Cerium salts
  • Magnetic susceptibility
  • Oxygen sorbent
  • Pressure swing adsorption
  • Silver salts
  • Thermal dispersion

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