Organic Vapor Recovery Using Activated Carbon Fiber Cloth and Electrothermal Desorption

118 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2003.This research developed a new air quality control technology that captures and recovers solvents for reuse in the process that generated the pollutants. This adsorption-based technology integrates the unique properties of Activated Carbon Fiber Cloth (ACFC), a high-performance micro-engineered adsorbent, with rapid in-situ Electrothermal Desorption (ED). ED regenerates the adsorbent by efficient electrical resistance heating. A unique aspect of this technology is that adsorbate readily condenses inside the adsorption vessel and is recovered as a pure liquid with only passive cooling during the regeneration of the ACFC. Such feature eliminates the need for auxiliary unit operations to treat the effluent that is generated during regeneration. A new adsorber configuration was also developed, with the ACFC arranged in multiple annular-shaped cartridges. Equilibrium adsorption isotherm data were also generated while alternating current was passing through the ACFC and at temperatures above the boiling point of the adsorbate. Solid-gas equilibria were shown to be accurately represented by the Dubinin-Radushkevich (DR) equation. A one-dimensional, homogenous, non-adiabatic model for the ED process was developed, which predicts the energy consumption and adsorbate mass recovery to within 7% of the experimental results. This new capture-and-recovery technology is cost-competitive, and can be used in situations where no current technology is practical.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD