Gas Purification – organic vapor adsorption

Volatile Organic Compounds lead to the formation of ground-near ozone, smog and have a general contribution to air pollution. They can furthermore be directly harmful to humans, with both – toxicity and carcinogenicity.

The emission of VOC is therefore strictly regulated. This includes the removal of solvent vapors and other VOC from process air in the pharmaceutical, pigment, toner, color, paint industries and anufacturering processes. In most cases, the TSA process is used for this kind of gas purification. The regeneration step is carried out with water vapor.

Also the purification of cabin air or other enclosed spaces often deal with the removal of VOC for health protection.

Additionally, mobile health protection devices (e.g. gas masks) are good examples for complex separation processes, including mixture vapors with water and VOCs. This is a typical application of a breakthrough curve with the usage of an technically usbale sorption capacity. The lifetime of a gas mask ends before any of the pollutants breaks through. The knowledge of the separation performance under application-related conditions is therefore highly important and can be easily measured with breakthrough curve measurement.

Recommended Literature

S. Brosillon, M.-H. Manero, J.-N. Foussard, Mass Transfer in VOC Adsorption on Zeolite: Experimental and Theoretical Breakthrough Curves, Environ. Sci. Technol. 2001, 35, 3571.

F. Delage, P. Pré, P. Le Cloirec, Mass Transfer and Warming during Adsorption of High Concentrations of VOCs on an Activated Carbon Bed, Environ. Sci. Technol. 2000, 34, 4816.

S. Fichtner, J. Hofmann, A. Möller, C. Schrage, J. M. Giebelhausen, B. Böhringer, R. Gläser, Decomposition of 2-chloroethylethylsulfide on copper oxides to detoxify polymer-based spherical activated carbons from chemical warfare agents, Journal of hazardous materials 2013, 262, 789.