Novel Differential Column Method for Measuring Multicomponent Gas Adsorption Isotherms in NaY Zeolite

Separation and purification of gas mixtures using selective adsorbents is widely used in different industries such as gas drying, air separation, and H₂ purification. Equilibrium analysis involving adsorption of binary gas mixtures provides important information related to the adsorbent performance in the separation of gases. In this study, a novel technique termed “differential column technique” was developed for binary isotherm measurement employing streams containing carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and ethylene at different compositions. This technique is based on measuring the gas desorption by changing equilibrium pressure conditions. The isotherm curve was generated by summing desorption amounts desorbed at each pressure step. Through the application of this technique, the single-component isotherms of CO₂, CO, and ethylene on zeolite NaY were measured, and the isotherms were compared to the results obtained by a standard gravimetric technique. (The average relative deviation is less than 6%.) The main advantage of the technique is the significant time savings, e.g., one experimental run is required to generate an isotherm compared to multirun experiments using a standard breakthrough technique, in addition to using a simpler experimental setup and generally smaller amount of sample (agglomerated or in a powder form). Another important feature of this technique is the relatively simple extension that allows measurements of gas mixture equilibria. As such, the proposed technique has the potential to be used as a fast screening technique for adsorbent selection based on single-component or mixture analysis. To investigate the consistency of the proposed technique, the binary isotherms of competitive, CO₂–C₂H₄, and noncompetitive, CO₂–CO, mixtures were investigated at different gas compositions. In addition, the effects of sorbate concentrations in the gas phase and interactions with the NaY zeolite active surface were investigated in relation to the adsorption selectivity and capacity, i.e., strong interaction of both CO₂ and ethylene with NaY site resulted in close adsorption selectivity 0.8 ≤ <i>S</i>_{CO₂/C₂H₄} ≤ 1.7, while CO₂ adsorbed more selectively compared to CO, 14 ≤ <i>S</i>_CO₂/CO ≤ 30, as a result of weak CO interaction with the adsorbent sites. Finally, the binary adsorption isotherms and selectivity were predicted by the multisite Langmuir model using the single component’s isotherm parameters. Modest agreements (error ≤ 28%) were obtained between the predicted and experimental results