Effects of non-ideal adsorption equilibria of gas mixtures on column dynamics

A theoretical study has been made for simulating the dynamic behavior of non-ideal gas mixtures in an isothermal fixed-bed adsorber. A mathematical model was developed which takes into account the non-ideality of adsorbable species on the adsorbed phase under equilibrium. The model is based on both the real adsorbed solution theory (RAST), which incorporates the activity coefficients in the multicomponent isotherm equations to account for the deviations from ideality, and the linear driving force (LDF) model for representing diffusion resistance inside the adsorbent particles. To describe the effect of non-ideal adsorption equilibrium of gas mixtures on the breakthrough curves, we considered several model mixtures of binary and ternary components which exhibit non-ideal behavior with azeotropic crossovers in the composition domains at equilibrium. Sample calculations of a fixed-bed adsorption were done with various inlet gas compositions of binary and ternary mixtures, respectively, at a fixed total concentration. From the calculation results, it was shown that the order of breakthrough curves could be changed at a certain value of inlet gas composition ratio. This result implies that the dynamic behaviors of fixed-bed adsorption are greatly influenced by multicomponent equilibrium models. Furthermore, the reversal phenomenon of breakthrough curves could not be simulated by the ideal adsorbed solution theory (IAST).